Community Based Service (CBS)/DD Update, January 25, 2006

Dear Autism Society of North Carolina Supporters,

The Department of Health and Human Services plans to present their plan on how to deal with the lack of a federally funded Developmental Therapy definition in detail to the Legislative Oversight Committee (LOC) on MHDDSA tomorrow (Thursday, January 26). The Departments’ plan will be consistent with the information they have been sharing for the past few weeks.

Those individuals with developmental disabilities currently receiving CBS and who are eligible for the waiver will receive waiver services.

Those who are eligible for the new MH community Support service will receive that service.

 

Those not eligible for either of the above and who would benefit from utilizing Medicaid Personal Care Services will receive that service.

Those individuals who are unable to take advantage of any of the above will receive a new state funded service called Developmental Therapies.

The Division is finalizing its instructions to LME’s on how this transition will take place. They intend to have those instructions out no later than the first of next week. We understand they are working on strategies to streamline the process. Even so, they know that it will require an extraordinary effort by state LME and provider staff to create this transition by March 20th. They have set in place internal mechanisms to monitor progress and make adjustments to their plans.

 

We believe this plan is the best option available considering the circumstances the Department is in. One area that is not yet finalized is the question of providing support services to children in schools. The CAP waiver does not allow for any CAP service to be provided in school although CBS is currently being used in that way for some children. The Department is in discussions with DPI on how best to resolve this issue but it will most likely require advocacy from the DD community to assure that these children continue to receive the support they need.

 

Once implemented the proposed solution should meet our goal of all people affected having their services continued [obviously the school children issue needs to be addressed]. The Department has committed to fund the additional expense out of their existing budget for this fiscal year without reducing services for other disability populations, and have plans to include increases for next year in their continuation and expansion budget plans. We applaud their commitment and the efforts to date to solve this problem.

 

Of course we want to see the details on implementation and monitor these efforts closely to assure that we truly do meet the goals of no one losing service. We will continue to forward all information received and provide additional analysis as we move forward. We expect a large number of people at the LOC meeting which we believe will help impress upon the Legislature and the administration the critical nature of assuring a smooth and complete transition.

 

As always, thank you for your support.

 

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jill Hinton Keel, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Autism Society of North Carolina
919-743-0204, ext 11
email: jhkeel@...

 

Thank you for your continued support of the Autism Society of North Carolina.

www.autismsociety-nc.org

1-800-442-2762 (NC only), 919-743-0204