Around here, when people are incarcerated in nursing homes the institution takes over their benefits and they don't have any money for gum, cigarettes, or anything else. Then the local docs begin their parades through, whereby they bill everyone in the place in one fell swoop. Podiatritists and Psychiatrists are known offenders. People can't have what they want. Instead they are exploited by that great euphemism, "health care."
Up here in Maine, they have the Aroostook County Home Health care. They do everything they can to keep people out of nursing homes. They send out nurses to your home, and housekeepers. It's a wonderful program.
Even is a person is confined to their bed, they will send someone out to help them. Run errands, feed them and help with their meds.
I know I bitch a lot about Maine, but you sure can't beat their health care!!!
I was able to get my neighbor the kind of help you sugget, but there were lots of problems partly because home health ws staffed by welfare-to work personnel with poor work ethics. Even still, it took several neighbors and friends to stay on top of her needs. In the end, her public services cost about $600/mo to stay at home, as she wanted, versus $3000/mo for a nursing home she did not want.
I hate this throw away society we have where we ship the elderly off to some "institution" because we can't be bothered to help them out in their time of need, like they did for us once upon a time. There's something wrong about that, IMHO.
In Texas, both my aunt and mother in law was able to keep a percentage of their income for "neccessities". With my MIL it was $45 and since everything else was included in the nursing home fee, this was enough to buy her depends and extra candies she might want.