Reports

This report, focused on New Jersey’s Personal Preference program, provides information on workers’ views about issues such as job satisfaction, roles and responsibilities, and ideas for recruiting and retaining new personal care workers. The report also describes similarities and differences between paid family caregivers and non-family caregivers.

This study provides rich data about the experiences of paid workers who care for children under the age of 18 with developmental disabilities in Florida's CCDE program, Consumer Directed Care (CDC). Topics include workers' views about issues such as job satisfaction, roles and responsibilities, and ideas for recruiting and retaining new personal care workers.

Focus groups in Arkansas were created to learn more about home health agency workers and paid workers of clients enrolled in IndependentChoices. This report provides information on workers' views about issues, as well as the similarities and differences between IndependentChoices and agency workers.

States are increasingly interested in the individual budget model for older Medicaid beneficiaries as a mechanism to improve responsiveness of benefits to beneficiaries’ needs and preferences and to increase their ability to remain outside or leave nursing homes. This report describes 10 operating individual budget model programs that serve older persons and identifies four areas of program design that are of particular importance to the success of the individual budget model.

This brief describes the evolution of beneficiary-managed home and community-based services since the original demonstration and provides an overview of state activity as of January 2006. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 gives states the option to use this model for an expanded range of home and community based services in their state Medicaid plans without having to obtain a waiver.

A template used by Arkansas' IndependentChoices program and a sample report cover page.

This article reviews the development of empowerment-based practice in social work. The article discusses the effect that the Cash & Counseling program has on empowerment, specifically for the elderly.

This report’s results suggest that surrogates can adequately represent consumer's views about satisfaction with personal assistance, and therefore provide encouragement to continue investigation of the utility of surrogate representatives. The study results also replicate previous findings that persons with cognitive impairments and persons with severe disabilities are able to express their preferences for everyday matters.

Liability issues pertaining to consumer-directed personal assistant services are discussed in this report. Issues are divided into topics including consumer-worker relationships, the risk of fiscal agents, the risk of consultants, and the risk for states and government entities. The report goes onto provide options to address liability risks.

First illustrating the US workers’ compensation system, this article continues to detail worker’s compensation programs and how they function. A historical overview and the basic objective of worker’s compensation laws are also reviewed. The article ends with a discussion of issues, challenges, and promising practices.