ADvancing States and our partners with the ARPA HCBS Technical Assistance Collective (TA Collective) are proud to release this paper that provides important and timely information about states’ efforts to evaluate the impact of their American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) home and community-based services (HCBS) initiatives and investments. Through the generous support of The John A. Hartford Foundation, The Care and Respect with Equity for All (CARE) Fund, The SCAN Foundation, and the Milbank Memorial Fund, the TA Collective conducted a state survey and focus groups to identify states that, relative to other states, demonstrated progress with planning for and conducting evaluation of their ARPA HCBS initiatives.
Due to the compressed timeline for ARPA HCBS spending plan development and implementation, states were more focused on identifying new and creative ways to improve and expand access to HCBS than on whether, how, and when to evaluate the impact of these new and creative undertakings. For most, evaluation became an undertaking that needed to be both planned and operationalized during the actual implementation of their ARPA HCBS initiatives. States that have started evaluation activities provide critical insights about why they found evaluation necessary and how evaluations are being conducted, and, most importantly, offer helpful recommendations for other states that have not yet begun evaluating the impact of this critical HCBS investment. These same states also offer ideas about how to maximize the impacts of future investments in our nation’s LTSS delivery system.