Money Follows the Person

The State of Massachusetts received Real Choice and Independence Plus grants. These presentations describe the projects, their structure, and an overview of grant activities. The goal of the Real Choice grant was to improve the quality and accessibility of home and community-based services available to individuals with disabilities. The goal of the Independence Plus grant was to recreate budgeting so that consumers were able to direct their budget and the services they receive.

As part of its CPASS grant, Alaska developed a curriculum for personal care assistant training. This curriculum goes through the various responsibilities that a home health worker would encounter. The curriculum is a total of 40 hours, followed up by written exams. These are the appendices to go along with Alaska's Personal Care Assistance 40 Hour Training Curriculum

These two presentations cover community access and inclusion for persons with disabilities, a focus of the Idaho Real Choice Systems Change Grants. The presentations provide guidelines for planning for community access and a model for assessment of community inclusion.

This presentation gives a brief overview of Idaho’s Real Choice grant and Money Follows the Person grant. The goals of the project were to: reduce the stigmatization of people with disabilities, complete and economic analysis of the current Medicaid system, community development, and to complete and effectiveness study. Review their key activities, methodology, and evaluation.

Community Service Options, Inc (CSO) is an organization dedicated to assisting persons with developmental disability to receive service and live in the “least restrictive” setting. CSO provides screening, eligibility assessment, service coordination, and advocacy throughout the Chicago area. The website provides links to their services and assessment tools.

Special Needs Plans (SNPs), authorized by the Medicare Modernization Act, offer state Medicaid programs a new potential vehicle for coordinating Medicare and Medicaid benefits for dual eligibles. This report investigates the degree to which states (and plans) are using this option to develop more fully integrated Medicare-Medicaid models for dual eligibles needing long-term care services.

Legisbrief is a briefing papers that offers important issues of the day. This volume provides an overview of new ways to help residents of nursing homes who want to return to their own homes but still receive services. The federal New Freedom Initiative awards grants to help states find ways to enable nursing home residents to use community-based care instead.

This report describes examples of more narrowly focused state legislation that is setting the policy and infrastructure for consumer direction, expanding the direct care workforce, and supporting persons who return to the community after living in institutions. The Appendix includes the specific legislative language of selected bills covered in the report.

HCBS.org News CLIPS highlights the important work of Real Choice Systems Change Grantees. In each issue, we examine a topic related to home and community-based care by providing an overview of recent papers and publications. The Fall issues provides an overview of the reports available on Money Follows the Person, a program that allows states to rebalance their long-term care support systems to support people in community-based alternatives rather than institutional settings.

ILRU hosted a webcast where Bob Kafka, from ADAPT of Texas and Gwen Gillenwater from the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) offered ideas about how policy planners, agencies, states and advocates can promote Money Follows the Person. There are a number of elements to consider including systemic issues, service coordination, housing, mental health, consumer involvement, quality and accountability. Listen to the presentation, review the transcript or read the handouts.