3:31

AMA Video 4

April 27, 2022

Video Transcript


Speakers: Talley Wells, Executive Director, North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities

Are services more limited here now due to Covid-related issues, staffing problems, funding for new sites, or anything else?

Talley Wells: Hi everybody, this is Talley Wells, I am the executive director of the North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities and I have been asked to do an ask me anything for social media. So people send in questions and I am answering them. And this question is our services more limited here now due to covid related issues, staffing problems, funding for new sites or anything else and the answer is yes and no, this is a time of great crisis but also some hope and opportunity. And so one of the big things that we all know has happened during Covid is that um we've had a pretty significant amount of inflation. We've had a number of people leave the workforce and we've had a workforce shortage and this is really impacting people with intellectual developmental disabilities and their direct care workers or direct support professionals. There's simply not enough. And it's very hard to compete right now when direct support professionals are often paid less than $15 an hour and a number of places in um the community Bojangles, Target, Wendy's are starting to pay that much or more for wages. And so the good news is that both department health and human services and the legislature have worked together to increase wages For direct support professionals. But it's still a very competitive environment for wages for direct support professionals and a number of folks particularly who have what's called the innovations waiver. Um their direct support professionals still make less than $15 an hour at the same time. There is extraordinary transformation happening with Medicaid and there's an opportunity for more people to get services through a change in Medicaid that is going to make a lot of services more available for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities due to different ways in which wages are paid. There may be some increased amount of wages that folks get as they get services through Medicaid. So um there have been a lot of changes. Um it's not directly related to Covid but it's pretty closely related to Covid because we've had the inflation and other things happening. But we also, because of the transformation of Medicaid, because of the wage is getting raised for direct support professionals, there is um some more opportunity for folks to hopefully get services and for us to to really take on the work workforce crisis. But it's something that the North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities is going to continue to do education and advocacy on. We have monthly public policy meetings that you can join, um you can find information about those on our N. C. C. D. Website and encourage you to continue to be part of this conversation because we do have a lot of folks in crisis right now and so we need to keep ensuring that more and more people are getting services and that direct support professionals are getting paid wages where we have enough direct support professionals. Thank you



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