Community-Integrated Personal Assistance Services and Supports

COLORADO

Grant Information

Name of Grantee

Department of Health Care Policy and Financing

Title of Grant

Colorado Community Personal Assistance Services and Supports (COmPASS)

Type of Grant

Community-Integrated Personal Assistance Services and Supports

Amount of Grant

$725,000

Year Original Funding Received

2002

Contact Information

George Good-deCurnou
COmPASS Grant Administrator
Colorado State Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, Systems Change Section
1570 Grant Street
Denver, CO 80203–1818
303–866–2704
George.Good-deCurnou@state.co.us

Subcontractor(s)

Consumer trainers
Research design consultant
Project evaluator

Target Population(s)

Adults, adolescents, and parents of children with disabilities.

Goals

  • Increase the independence and self-sufficiency of Coloradans with disabilities through community integration.
  • Improve the quality of attendant support received by Coloradans with disabilities through enhanced consumer control.

Activities

  • Design and implement a personal assistance services and supports (PASS) option in which consumers exercise control over selection or assignment of attendants, scheduling decisions, location and service delivery decisions, care planning, and training.
  • Develop consumer-oriented materials, curricula, and training programs that would build skills in self-advocacy, problem solving, and negotiating PASS programs and benefits.
  • Establish a train-the-trainer program that would enable trainers to become community-based training resources for the state, provider agencies, advocacy groups, and individuals.
  • Design and conduct provider training for staff in home health agencies, personal care/homemaker agencies, independent living centers, and case managers in nursing certification and consumer-direction philosophy.
  • Implement a Home Health Agency Consumer-Direction Pilot that would test a model that is an alternative to both the Consumer-directed Attendant Support (CDAS) model and to traditional home health services.
  • Conduct formal evaluations to analyze client outcomes and to study effectiveness, satisfaction, and quality among various PASS programs and services.

Abstract

Colorado is recognized as a national leader and innovator in long-term care services, including PASS. However, Colorado faces a number of PASS-related challenges that come from uneven geographic population distribution, jobs, economic prosperity, services, and resources. These statewide challenges include chronic provider and worker shortages, measurement issues related to assessing and monitoring the quality of PASS, and the various training needs of PASS clients, providers, workers, and case managers.

Colorado seeks to help connect clients to PASS options that enable them to live in the most integrated community settings appropriate to their individual support requirements and preferences. The project will engage in a strategy to provide extensive training at all levels to ensure that the philosophy of consumer direction is incorporated across all COmPASS options. The project will also identify and seek to remedy any regulatory, statutory, or program obstacles.

COmPASS will focus primarily on training and materials development; however, other systems changes are necessary to ensure the improvement of PASS quality and the promotion of client independence.

The COmPASS Project will result in enduring systems change in the areas of access, availability and adequacy of services, quality of services, and value. The CDAS waiver will address provider shortages and access issues by broadening the potential PASS labor pool. In addition to client training, interested providers and workers may also seek training. Provider training will be open to certified and noncertified attendants and may increase the pool of attendants available to the CDAS waiver project.

A project evaluation will formally analyze "client-directedness," health concerns, independence outcomes, and satisfaction. Hopefully, when quality increases for the same price, value is also enhanced.