In 2017, after graduating high school, I began a summer internship working in an underfunded and understaffed state-run group home for 8 men with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) that I continued for the next 3 summers. While this was not the first time I had worked in a program for adults with I/DD, it was my first experience with the complicated realities of day-to-day caretaking work with people who had suffered significant institutional trauma suffered while they grew up in state facilities infamous for warehousing and neglecting the physical, social and emotional needs of those who lived there. After the onset of the pandemic I was to go in, and unable to remain in contact with them as none were able to use the phone to communicate, so I began to monitor state-provided data on COVID-19 in congregate care so that I could, however remotely, have a sense of their well being and maintain a connection to their lives. This monitoring eventually led to over a year of qualitative and quantitative work that culminated in my undergraduate senior thesis, an investigation of the ways in which the legacy of the American eugenics movement impacted the effects of COVID-19 in congregate care facilities for people with I/DD in MA. While writing this thesis, in addition to having to bear the weight of finishing a college degree as a person with ADHD and autism during a pandemic, I developed a severe and likely life-limiting auto immune disease, that I did not seek treatment for for over a year due to the rural location of my college. After graduating from college in 2021, I immediately began working as a clinical case manager in a day program for adults with I/DD. Balancing this work with my personal experiences of disability further illuminated the failures of the current systems to provide humane care for people with many different types of disabilities. Both myself and my clients often felt unheard, frightened, and isolated as we attempted to navigate the large administrative systems that stood between us and proper care, and unfortunately no amount of caring and attentive direct support workers or doctors could address the systemic challenges. These realizations lead me to apply, and then gain acceptance, to Boston College in their master's in clinical mental health social work program. I plan to continue supporting my clients, and have chosen to pursue my degree over 4 years rather than 2, to maintain continuity of care for the people I serve, for whom I am ostensibly getting this degree. While I am pleased that I will be able to remain in my current role, as someone with a significant chronic illness I am not able to take on more work to supplement the costs of tuition not already covered by federal student loans, and as is unfortunately extremely common, I am paid a meager amount as a front line healthcare worker for adults with disabilities. This scholarship would help me lighten the burden of seeking a master's degree to take care of my individuals, without forcing my to put myself at risk of physical harm by attempting to take on more than I can carry due to my poor physical health.