Money Follows the Person Rebalancing Initiative

MAINE

Grant Information

Name of Grantee

Maine Department of Health and Human Services

Title of Grant

Shifting the Balance: Individual Choice and Community Options

Type of Grant

Money Follows the Person Rebalancing Initiative

Amount of Grant

$750,000

Year Original Funding Received

2003

Contact Information

David Goddu
Financial and Resources Manager
40 State House Station
Kennebec County
Augusta, ME 04333-0040
207-287-6642
David.Goddu@maine.gov

Subcontractor(s)

Eileen Griffin, Project Director
Muskie School of Public Service
509 Forest Avenue
PO Box 9300
Portland, ME 04104-9300
207-780-4813
eileeng@usm.maine.edu

Target Population(s)

Adults with mental retardation and autism, adults with brain injury, and persons with any type of disability in all age groups.

Goals

  • Enhance individual choice and control by adopting a standardized assessment and budgeting process for mental retardation waiver services that results in consistent, predictable, and truly portable budgets.
  • Create community options for persons with acquired brain injury by directing resources toward more person-centered, consumer-driven services offered in the most integrated and appropriate setting.
  • Identify cross-system performance measures that enable Maine to comprehensively and coherently assess its success at achieving a balance of services across systems.

Activities

  • Adapt a standardized individual assessment and budget tool to meet Maine's needs.
  • Develop a published rate structure, rebalanced to enhance community integration goals.
  • Pilot an individual budget tool and assess its impact on consumer satisfaction, providers, budget neutrality, staffing requirements, and Medicaid management information systems.
  • Analyze service needs, identify best practices, and analyze funding constraints and alternative funding strategies for persons with brain injury.
  • Design and implement a pilot for testing community service options for persons with brain injury who are transitioning to more integrated settings.
  • Identify and define key terms related to rebalancing and community integration, and identify performance measures for evaluating the State's success at rebalancing.

Abstract

With this grant project, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) will continue its current efforts to shift control to the consumer and to shift services to the community. Each of the grant's three goals responds directly to recommendations made by Maine's Work Group for Community-Based Living, a cross-disability, cross-age group consumer task force.

For persons with mental retardation and autism receiving waiver services, individual budgets are currently based on provider-negotiated cost reimbursement, answering the question "What does the provider need to support this individual?" rather than "What supports does the individual need?" To enhance individual choice and control, DHHS will adopt a standardized assessment and budgeting tool that will be used to produce consistent, fair, predictable, and truly portable budgets based on individual need rather than provider need.

For persons with brain injury, many of the services available are inadequate to make living in the community a meaningful option. DHHS will analyze and test the feasibility of offering cost-effective community options that redirect funding for individuals with brain injury to more integrated settings and develop strategies for stimulating new community service options to support such individuals.

DHHS will work with Maine's Work Group for Community-Based Living to identify cross-system performance measures that will be used to evaluate the State's success at shifting the balance to increased consumer choice and greater community options.

Products will include feasibility studies, implementation plans, and sustainability plans. Major partners include consumers, families, providers, and other state agencies.