A tremendous shortage of providers exists in many regions of Virginia. This shortage is caused by a number of factors, primarily the low Medicaid reimbursement rates.
There is such a shortage in providers for In- Home services under the DD Waiver. Things will not get any better until we start looking at rates across the board for all waiver services. There is such a shortage in providers that choice is not an option. In some areas there is only one provider to do the services. The direct care provider only makes about $10.00 an hour while other services under the DD Waiver makes only 8:60.
This is not right; especially since it cost more money to care for a person in an institution then it is in the home and community. What will it take to convince legislators that paying a living wage is good for the citizens of our Commonwealth? Families should never have to make the difficult decision to place their children in an institutional setting because they cannot obtain the services and supports they need.
What some might not understand when you live in an area that has absolutely nothing and if you lose your providers you are also in jeopardy of losing your waiver slot as well. We are in jeopardy of losing our last provider because of the issue of behaviors and safety in our home. The clients should not be the ones who lose out because of the difficulties of trying to find or keep their providers.
Community Services Broad’s that provide psychiatric services and counseling are required to provide those services to people who need them regardless of whether the person has MR or DD. Psychiatric services and counseling are not Waiver services. How do you get Community Services Broad’s to provide these services? Under the DD Waiver services do not include psychiatric services and in most areas the psychiatric services will not accept Medicaid. We need psychiatric services under the MR or DD Waiver because of this.
We need Behavioral management programs for children at any age to see that implementation of behavioral training and managementprotocols at home are in place. We need someone who is trained to work on hand and not just write a plain for a behavioral management programs. They can write any plain but the problem is getting it to work. When a client has behavioral issues the agency can just walked out and end the service that is much needed. If the clients did not have behavioral we all would not need the waivers in the first place. Agency should not be allowed to just walk out.
About Public school providing services to children ages three to 22, is how do you get the school to provide these services if they can’t provide them at the school and end up send the family into the court system or to another school to get out of providing the service that the child needs? As it turns out that you are unaware about so many families are place into the court system over behaviors that is parent of the child disable so that the school can get out of providing these services. Schools needs to step up and do what they are to for these children under their IEP.
About the Services to adults no longer served by the school system needs some improvements as providing these services for the children that has Autism so they could provide these services without doing the same thing that the schools by putting the families or the client back into the court system.
No families should be put into the court system by agencies or schools system due to the fact these clients are disable and they are having a hard time in the communities in which they live in. These clients needs train supports from agencies and not these untrained provides just out of High School themselves or providers that is not train in the disables that these clients have.
What gets me is Medicaid is funded by the government and the fund comes from us tax payer and the state let these agencies us untrained providers that is placing all these clients at a greater risk for failure.
Also about the Adequacy of coordination of services for individuals with ASD over their entire lifetime, includingTransition from early intervention to public school services and Transition from public school to adult services is in deep need of improvement on the school end as we are having problems in getting the school to start on the work of the Transition IEP and our Childs is being left behind right before our eyes and is getting away with it. When you filed a complain about these issues nothing is being done to get the schools to do their job in the first place.
Agencies should not be allowed to us untrained provider as well as the school should not be allow to us someone that is untrained to do the aide or other services that is in our children IEP.
The Challenges faced by Virginians with ASD and their caregivers in navigating the current service delivery system is failing all these clients. These clients are the ones that are being left behind and are being set-up for great failure in our communities today. Most Agencies is in this field just for the money. It has nothing to do about the need of the client at all anymore. I call this greed.
Families are in great need for more agencies, better services companies to do the trained services and better service across the broad from the school systems right down to health care including medicate services. Most of most of us families do not even have any respite services and most of us are at a. “burn-out state.” That’s not good at all.
Under the DD Waiver some agencies flat out will not do these services even if it is under the Waiver. This is not right! If these services are under the Waiver, it should be that these agencies should provide all the services under the Waiver not just being able to pick out what they want to server for their clients leaving out all the other services.
We need government enforcements on these agencies across the board.Virginians with ASD and their caregivers are in a deep risk for failure.
