LEGISLATIVE AGENDA:
Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD)
March, 2015
DEVELOPMENT OF 24-HOUR RESIDENTIAL SERVICES
- The Legislature must provide funding for new 24-hour residential services, as well as urgently needed day and at-home services, for 300 individuals, at a cost this year of $14.25 million (state share for 6 months).
- The Legislature must ensure that OPWDD’s 7-year-old property thresholds—for both purchase and rental—be increased to market rate, especially in high-priced Manhattan.
- The Legislature must provide funding to restore the cut, resulting from OPWDD’s new funding mechanism, to room and board in IRA residential programs.
Families with adult children still at home are sick with worry, especially those whose children cannot take care of themselves and will one day require round-the-clock residential services. Yet again, the Executive Budget turns its back on these families. While the budget proposes $60 million in state funds for new services, half of that money is designated for continuation of funding for programs begun last year. Only $30 million would be available for new services. And that $30 million would have to cover all types of new services, including not only residential but also adult day, employment, respite, and other services.
Although there has been virtually no new residential development for years, this budget offers mere crumbs for families caring for their adult children at home—even for aging, ill, and exhausted families who can no longer safely care for their children at home. About 6,400 New Yorkers need residential services within 2 years. Yet OPWDD has prioritized other deserving populations, such as: students aging out of residential schools, people who are homeless, or whose caregivers have died or become disabled. Yes, these people must be served. But families with urgent needs—especially those whose children have intensive and costly needs—must also be priorities. Truly, New York State is failing these families.
WAGE INCREASES FOR DIRECT SUPPORT PROFESSIONALS
- The Legislature must commit to increasing, over several years, wages of direct support professionals to a level commensurate with their job responsibilities.
The quality of our services lies in the hands of direct support professionals, who do everything from changing diapers and lifting physically disabled adults to handling behavioral or medical emergencies. For this complex and demanding work, they get extensive and on-going training. And then they quit.
Direct support professionals’ salaries are a disgrace. With an average entry level salary of $10-$12 per hour, many workers leave for higher paying jobs in other fields. Most of those who stay hold two, even three, jobs just to make ends meet. Many qualify for public assistance. The proposed salary increases are welcome, but 4% won’t lift direct support professionals out of poverty. It won’t stem the unrelentingly high staff turnover, and it won’t help in recruiting qualified staff.
Direct support professionals are entitled to a wage that truly reflects the demands and responsibilities of the job. With a prospective minimum wage increase, this issue takes on new urgency. Any wage increase must be linked to funding to providers to cover the costs.
SELF-DIRECTION SERVICES
- The Legislature must urge OPWDD to immediately renegotiate with CMS the recent reimbursement changes that could wreck Self-Direction Services.
Families and individuals who have chosen to Self-Direct their services are extremely distressed over recent funding changes imposed by OPWDD and CMS. A lynchpin of OPWDD’s Transformation Agreement with CMS, Self-Direction Services enable people to design their own highly individualized services within an approved personal budget. But the October redesign of this service has nearly crippled it.
- The changes in reimbursement to Fiscal Intermediaries (FI): Essential to Self-Direction, FIs handle payroll, taxes, etc. Yet the new reimbursement level is so low that even committed FI providers are agonizing over whether they can afford to continue.
- Changes to the Personal Resource Allocation (PRA-the individual’s approved budget) may reduce the individual’s available resources. Even prior to the redesign, PRAs were too low to support 24-hour residential services for those with intensive needs.
If these barriers are not addressed, Self-Direction will no longer be a viable model. OPWDD must promptly renegotiate these issues with CMS.