Integrating Long-Term Supports with Affordable Housing

VERMONT

Grant Information

Name of Grantee

Agency for Human Services, Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living (DAIL)

Title of Grant

Integrating Long-Term Supports with Affordable Housing

Type of Grant

Integrating Long-Term Supports with Affordable Housing

Amount of Grant

$900,000

Year Original Funding Received

2004

Contact Information

Mr. Richard H. Moffi, Project Director
Real Choices Supportive Housing
802-241-4612
richard.moffi@dail.state.vt.us

Ms. Joan Haslett*
Real Choice Systems Change Project Director
VT Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living
103 South Main Street
Waterbury, VT 05671-1601
802-241-4529
joan.haslett@dail.state.vt.us
* PACE component of grant

Subcontractor(s)

Ms. Nancy Rockett Eldridge, Executive Director
Cathedral Square Corporation
308 Pine Street
Burlington, VT 05401
802-863-3868
eldridge@cathedralsquare.org

Ms. Naomi Clemmons, Project Manager
JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc.
47 Maple Street, Suite 103
Burlington, VT 05401
802-860-6670
nclemmons@jsi.com

Target Population(s)

Elders and adults with disabilities who require long-term supports coordinated with affordable and accessible housing and are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.

Goals

  • Improve access to housing by preserving, developing, and enhancing supportive housing projects.
  • Establish medication assistance best practices to support critical early aging in place for elderly or disabled adult residents in unlicensed congregate housing.
  • Determine viability and complete planning to co-locate two Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) sites with affordable housing.

Activities

  • Provide consultation services through Cathedral Square Corporation (CSC) to a minimum of ten supportive housing projects that can or will serve a significant number of Medicaid beneficiaries and medically needy persons.
  • Build the knowledge base of CSC regarding issues that challenge the development or operation of affordable supportive housing settings.
  • Provide early planning and service development support to an affordable assisted living demonstration project sponsored by a public housing authority.
  • Establish medication assistance best practices for unlicensed supportive housing.
  • Implement pilot studies of medication assistance best practices and conduct evaluations.
  • Through training, provide housing, service, and care providers with the information and skills they need to implement medication assistance best practices.
  • Transfer enduring knowledge and resources of medication assistance best practices to programs and partnerships that will sustain the work after the life of this grant.
  • Conduct planning activities, including a feasibility study, to coordinate PACE sites within affordable and accessible housing in the greater Burlington and Rutland areas.
  • Collaborate with the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph-Vermont (RHSJ) to determine the feasibility of co-locating the PACE site at its convent and, if feasible, convert the existing convent into affordable housing.

Abstract

The Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living (DAIL) has been designated by the Vermont Agency for Human Services and its state Medicaid Director to lead the grant project. DAIL is the state department charged with accomplishing the shift of nursing home resources to community services. Each of the grant project initiatives is strongly supported by public/private partnerships and will benefit from the guidance and technical assistance of a workgroup that shall include partners, stakeholders, and consumers.

DAIL has contracted with CSC, as lead developer, management, and operations consultant to the housing network, regarding elders and adults with disabilities and will work with community housing partners including the Vermonters Coming Home partnership.

JSI Research & Training Institute has been retained by DAIL to research, analyze, recommend, help establish, and evaluate medication assistance best practices to be implemented within unlicensed congregate housing to support aging in place and consumer satisfaction for residents of those settings.

Vermont PACE will lead focus groups with seniors to evaluate proposals that plan for two PACE sites that will coordinate services with supportive housing to meet later, high care needs.

The grant project's measurable outcomes include (1) the number of housing sites and Medicaid beneficiaries assisted (and potentially assisted); (2) a public housing agency plan for a first demonstration of affordable assisted living in public housing; (3) adoption by the State of medication assistance best practices in unlicensed housing sites; (4) consumer satisfaction with the suggested best practices; (5) provider satisfaction that they have the knowledge, skills, and coordination with others to do their part to support medication assistance; and (6) feasibility studies for two sites completed by PACE.