Newsletter, periodic publication

The Governor's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities in Vermont is working towards "Promoting the employment of Vermont citizens of all abilities". Here you will find an archive of the committees' newsletter "Abilities," which focuses on programs and resources on a number of topics having to do with the employment of people with disabilities.

The results of a survey on the interest of managed care organizations in developing a Cash & Counseling option for delivering long-term personal assistance services.

The Project SEARCH High School Transition Program is a school-to-work program that takes place entirely at the workplace. The goal for each student is competitive employment. The program provides real-life work experience combined with training in employability and independent living skills to help youths with significant disabilities make successful transitions from school to productive adult life. Review an article from the DCS newsletter and accompanying pamphlets that outline this program.

The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health identified self-directed care as one service innovation that could create a more consumer- and family oriented mental health system. Four years later, there are still fewer than 400 consumers in five states accessing self-directed care in the public mental health system. This Open Forum identifies three main barriers to explain this lack of progress. The abstract and article are available for download here.

This article by the Assistant Secretary for Aging, Josefina G. Carbonell, describes how the US Department of Health and Human Services' Administration on Aging leveraged the investments of a number of private foundations and entered into a partnership with them to develop, test, and support the initiatives that were eventually included in the Bush administration's Choices for Independence Reauthorization Proposal.

This article describes the importance of examining views from multiple key stakeholders involved in implementing CD programs. The report focuses on the three background studies that informed the Cash & Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation, as well as results from the first year of implementation.

Implementation issues discussed in this article are centered around how consumers, providers, payers, and policy makers are affected by consumer-directed programs. The information for the report was gathered through interviews with twenty policy experts from the aging and disabilities community.

Intended to provide historical perspective on the federal government's involvement in the Cash & Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation as an example of the federal role in consumer direction, this article describes how previous research and analysis led to DALTCP's interest in sponsoring this social experiment.

This article explores savings outcomes and programmatic factors that may support savings in the Cash & Counseling Demonstration, using a convenience sample of Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries from three states: Arkansas, Florida, and New Jersey.

The purpose of this study was to determine consumers’ interest in a cash option for personal assistance services, in comparison to traditional agency-delivered services. Telephone surveys and focus groups produced information on four states, including demographics, and preference toward a cash option. The results are discussed and policy issues are examined.