In group homes and other care-settings for disabled individuals in Virginia, abuse, neglect, and other forms of substandard care occur far too often.  The proposed Guidance on Corrective Action Plans is welcome, common sense regulation.  It emphasizes the health, safety, and welfare (HSW) of the individual over the obfuscation and abdication of responsibility by providers. 

My experience has been, as the parent of a disabled young adult in a community living group home, that providers run their operations to the allowable limits of state regulations.  However, those regulations fail, in many areas, to protect the HSW of the disabled individual.  This is inexcusable and unacceptable.

That “providers are required to conduct a root cause analysis (RCA) …” is common sense, but shockingly, it’s not common sense within the current regulations.

Requiring providers to develop a plan of action, monitoring the effectiveness of those plans, then documenting demonstrable compliance, is a no-brainer level of accountability.

The example for creating a CAP is excellent.  Timelines for compliance and corrective action are essential (for both the licensee and the regulator) to the process.

Verification by the Office of Licensing that corrective action plans have been implemented is also critical, and, once again, just plain common sense.

I applaud and fully support the new regulations and what they are trying to accomplish.