Speaker: Talley Wells
What is the funding criteria in relation to movement from ICF-IDD homes as well as the age criteria?
Talley Wells: Hi everybody, this is Talley Wells and I am the Executive Director of the North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities. It is June of 2022 which means it is the Olmstead anniversary, happy anniversary. And today's question is, what is the funding criteria in relation to movement from ICF-IDD Homes as well as the age criteria? Well, first of all, what is an ICF-IDD Home? ICF Stands for intermediate care facility and IDD Stands for intellectual and developmental disability. In North Carolina a lot of times when an ICF-IDD Home is a group home where individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities live together and receives 24 hours of supports. And essentially the provider is paid for the whole care for the individual with an intellectual and developmental disability and how you move out of that home into an even more community setting so that maybe your own apartment, maybe with a roommate, um maybe in a smaller setting that's more integrated is often going to be through Medicaid. And so the, the easiest way to do that is through the innovations waiver, which is our Medicaid waiver for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Medicaid waiver is essentially a package of services that you can get that can help pay for the support you need to live more meaningfully in the community in a more integrated setting. But we have a 15,000 person waiting list. Um so there is another program called Money Follows the Person which can sometimes help support people to move into the community. And we're also moving into something called the Tailored Plan and Medicaid Transformation. And as part of that, the state has opted into something called 1915(i). 1959(i) it sounds like an algebraic equation and math equation, it sounds complicated, It's really not, it's 1915(i) is just a part of the federal statute, you don't really need to know that, except it's just what we're calling it. But 1915(i) is that part of the Medicaid statute that says if the state opts into it, the state will provide services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and Medicaid in the way in which the state designs the service and here what that's gonna mean when this comes into effect in December of 2022 is that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities who have Medicaid can get up to 28 hours of services of something called community living supports and that can enable a lot of folks to potentially move out of ICF-IDDs into the community and get that number of hours of supports. Now that's not going to serve everyone. And we're still going to need the Innovations Waiver for folks who need more services. We're still gonna need Money Follows the Person. Um and we also need to really continue to advocate for the state to follow Olmstead because Olmstead of course says that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, if you are in a more congregate setting if you are in a setting that doesn't allow you to live as fully in the community as others, that you should have that right. And the federal government is also requiring under something called the settings rule to require states to more and more, make sure that individuals with developmental disabilities have the option to live in the community. And so we continue to need to do the advocacy of Olmstead. But we're also excited that 1915(i) and other options are going to enable more people to live in the community. But we also have a workforce shortage, a workforce crisis. And that means that we continue to need to ensure that our direct support professionals are getting paid enough so that we have enough quality direct support professionals to enable people to live in the community. In terms of an age requirement, there's really not as much of an age requirement for the ICF-IDDs to move out of them, Um as there is to make sure that you have the funding resources through the innovations waiver or 1915(i) to be able to do that. And so the state is also um engaging in Olmstead planning and developing a plan based on the Olmstead decision to ensure more and more people are able to live in the community and that's what we all need to do to make sure that we are educating our state leaders and our policymakers about the importance of the state, really living up to the vision of Olmstead that all people with disabilities can live full and meaningful lives in the community. Thank you!
