Brandie Fleeger worries about all her children.

But when it comes to her 7-year-old daughter Goldie, the single mother in Connoquenessing Township has special concerns.

Goldie has Down syndrome, and that has more than once kept Fleeger awake at night worrying about the young girl’s future — especially when Fleeger eventually will no longer be around to care for her.

“It’s in the back of my mind all the time,” said Fleeger.

Goldie, who has three other siblings and a loving family, may have emotional support, but until recently, government had surrounded Goldie with hurdles that would have prevented her from ever amassing a savings or accruing any assets that could help her when she is a senior citizen.

Only weeks ago a game changing law — called the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act — was signed by President Obama.

The ABLE Act allows families of a disabled child to save for their child’s long-term disability expenses by opening tax-free savings accounts where they can save up to $100,000 without losing government benefits. The program could be available as soon as 2015.

“Until now she could not save money for a car or equipment or housing. That’s changed,” Fleeger said. “And now it’s nice to know that I’ll be able to save money for Goldie as she gets older and make sure her needs are met.”

In what primary sponsor U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., called “unfair rules,” federal laws previously restricted people with disabilities to $2,000 or less in assets and $674 or less in monthly income. If they surpassed that, they would lose benefits such as Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income. They lost those benefits until they used up their savings.

The ABLE Act, first introduced in 2008, allows individuals to save money for housing, education and medical expenses. The program is modeled after the popular 529 college savings plans for students.

Joan Giese supports the change.

Giese, Fleeger’s mother, also is the family service manager at the Butler County Children’s Center, the agency in Butler County that offers Head Start.

There are 303 children in the county in that federally-funded program for 3- and 4-year-olds in low income families. Another 80 children are enrolled in early Head Start, which is a program for up to 3-year-olds.

Head Start is mandated to have 10 percent of its enrollment be disabled children who have a diagnosis such as autism, developmental delays and Down syndrome. In Butler County, the percentage is around 27 percent.

One component to the Head Start program is setting goals for those families and working toward them. Giese said when she started working with Head Start in the 1980s, most parents had the goals of getting jobs or GEDs.

Today, most parents have jobs, high school educations and even college experience.

“Their goal is everyone’s American dream ... owning a home,” Giese said.

This is an especially important goal to parents who have disabled children, who worry about the stability of their child’s housing when they are gone.

But the way the law had previously been established, buying a home was made tricky if not impossible for these parents because they were not permitted to save enough for a down payment, Giese said.

There are some forms of trusts that would allow parents to financially help their children after their deaths, but not every one was aware of these programs or knew how to navigate them.

“This particular piece of legislation makes a whole lot more sense,” said Pat Brennen, executive director at Community Care Connections, which provides services in education, life skills training, support services and advocacy.

The programs, offered from infancy to end of life, do not require a low income household. In the county, they serve about 750 people a year, and Brennen said she’s not yet encountered a participant who would not qualify for SSI.

“Up until this point, if somebody’s parents wrote a will or planned to leave the estate to the family, they had to be careful because their child could lose benefits like medical coverage or eligibility for programs,” she said. “So these children had quite a bit to lose by getting a part of their parents’ estate.”

That type of system did not benefit the child or the taxpayers, who ultimately would pay for services and items the inheritance could have covered.

“You don’t expect to outlive your children,” Brennen said. “But sometimes when you have a child with a disability, that’s a scary thought because you worry who will help care for your child when you are gone. Families are in a dilemma anyway about finding the best way to deal with that. This piece of legislation makes one piece of that dilemma so much easier.”