Blogs

State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 02-12-2016
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 02/12/2016 Lead Story: New York Leadership from NYSARC predicts devastating financial consequences on the field if a Medicaid funding solution is not included as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s $15 minimum wage proposal . NYSARC is the largest not-for-profit organization in New York State supporting individuals with disabilities and their families. St. Lawrence NYSARC, which serves about 750 clients, closed one workshop in Hermon last year, consolidated some services, and has cut its workforce from about 620 to about 580 through attrition over the last few years. In testimony submitted to the Joint ...
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State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 01-28-2016
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 01/29/2016 Lead Story: National - Rocky rollouts as states try Medicaid-managed long-term care - Chicago Tribune The national move to home and community-based care away from nursing homes has been widely supported by senior citizen, consumer and disability rights communities. Surveys show older Americans prefer receiving health care services at home instead of in institutional settings. In recent years nearly a million people with disabilities or conditions severe enough to qualify for nursing home admission have been enrolled in Medicaid -managed long-term care programs, which operate like ...
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State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 12-18-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 12/18/2015 There will be no State Disability News published during the next two weeks. It will resume on Friday, January 8, 2016. Have a great holiday season! Lead Story: Minnesota Sheltered workshops that employ thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities, often for just pennies an hour, would be forced to make drastic changes under a state proposal to eliminate a share of their public subsidies . This week the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development is expected to approve a plan that would phase out nearly $2 million in annual subsidies and replace them with incentives ...
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State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 12-10-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 12/11/2015 Lead Story: Ohio Ralph (Joe) Magers, Pamela Steward, and Mark Felton produce floor samples for Seneca Re-Ad Industries, an Ohio-based sheltered workshop for workers with disabilities. Their job responsibilities include cutting floor tiles, printing labels, punching holes through tile pieces, chaining tile pieces together and packaging. For their efforts, they are paid $2.50 an hour. The Seneca County Board of Developmental Disabilities, which operates Seneca Re-Ad, argues these wages are legal because it is the holder of a special certificate from the Department of Labor. This certificate ...
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State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 12-03-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 12/04/2015 Lead Story: Tennessee By July, the last of the Tennesseans with intellectual disabilities who have been confined — in some cases since childhood — to large and often isolated state facilities will move into neighborhood homes, ending an era in which institutionalizing people with autism or Down syndrome was standard practice. The closure of Nashville's 92-year-old Clover Bottom Developmental Center this month and the expected closure of Greene Valley Developmental Center in East Tennessee next year will save the state tens of millions of dollars each year on intensive, 24-hour ...
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State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 11-20-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 11/20/2015 There will be no State Disability News next week. We will return on December 4 th . Lead Story: Iowa Federal officials are heeding the thousands of Iowans who have flooded them with concerns about the state’s plan to privatize its Medicaid program, Democratic legislators said Wednesday. Three leading Iowa Senate Democrats met Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C., with Obama administration officials who will decide whether to approve Gov. Terry Branstad’s plan. The Iowa legislators want federal officials to at least slow down the shift to private Medicaid management, which ...
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State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 11-12-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 11/13/2015 This week had an unusually high number of newsworthy articles. There were excellent disability exposes in several states (FL, MN, TX, VT) and numerous articles regarding state funding issues. Kansas continues its downward spiral sadly, and Illinois and Pennsylvania still don’t have approved state budgets 5 months into the year causing serious issues for human service nonprofits in both states. Lead Story: Minnesota - Five Part Series – A Matter of Dignity Part 1: Dead-end jobs, low pay (See parts 2-5 below) In a field on the outskirts of town, a man with Down syndrome is ...
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State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 11-05-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 11/06/2015 Lead Story: Pennsylvania Virginia Brown, Director of the Bureau of Policy and Regulatory Management informed the subcommittee that DHS has decided to pursue a concurrent 1915b and 1915c waiver to implement managed care with HCBS. A 1915b waiver allows the state to implement mandatory managed care. A 1915c waiver addresses eligibility and providing LTSS in the community. Currently there are five Pennsylvania Medicaid waivers under 1915c. These will be combined into one 1915c waiver for Community HealthChoices and DHS will develop a 1915b waiver. Both waivers will be released for Public ...
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State Disability News Highlights

By Diane McComb posted 10-31-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 10/30/2015 Lead Story: Virginia A U.S. District Court judge on Friday postponed a decision on whether to force Virginia to speed efforts to overhaul how the state treats people with severe disabilities. Judge John A. Gibney said he would rule in December on a Department of Justice request for hard deadlines in implementing changes agreed to in a 2012 court settlement. The agreement, based on the Americans with Disabilities Act and a related Supreme Court ruling, said that disabled people are entitled to treatment in community settings instead of in large institutions. The settlement established ...
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 10/23/2015

By Diane McComb posted 10-23-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 10/23/2015 Lead Story: New York Several New York state lawmakers raised concerns Tuesday about federal and state policies to move more disabled people from institutions to community residences and managed care for behavioral treatment. The state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities currently supports 38,000 New Yorkers in residences and 80,000 with day services. It has about 400 people in institutional settings, a total the agency plans to reduce to 150, Deputy Commissioner Helen DeSanto told lawmakers. She said the state plans to close its Brooklyn Developmental Center campus at ...
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 10/16/2015

By Diane McComb posted 10-16-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 10/16/2015 Lead Story: Georgia Georgia still hasn’t lived up to its part of an agreement with the federal government to shift severely mentally ill residents out of state mental hospitals and into community settings, the Justice Department said in a scathing letter that demanded a corrective action plan by November. Federal authorities said in a Sept. 23 letter to Gov. Nathan Deal’s office that Georgia failed to comply with a number of key tenets of a landmark 2010 settlement with the Justice Department after an investigation into the abuse and deaths of dozens of patients. The probe was prompted ...
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 10/09/2015

By Diane McComb posted 10-09-2015
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 10/09/2015 Lead Story: Kansas The state said Tuesday that it will delay a major overhaul in the way it provides services for the disabled. The announcement comes after people with disabilities, their family members, providers and care takers voiced major concerns with the state’s nine-month time line to switch a complex system of care for some of Kansas’ most vulnerable populations. “This is probably the single biggest change this system has seen” in nearly 20 years, said Dee Staudt, director of the Sedgwick County Developmental Disability Organization. In 1995 the state passed a law, guaranteeing ...
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Post Script

By Joni Fritz posted 07-28-2015
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This is Bonnie-Jean Brooks, former ANCOR President. My last blog showed former ANCOR Executive Director, Joni Fritz's picture. Guess why? I am at her house in Estes Park Colorado. Between us, we know a little bit of history.
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 08/01/2014

By Diane McComb posted 08-01-2014
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State Disability News Highlights for Period ending 08/01/2014 Lead Story: New York Standing outside her sixth-floor apartment in the Bronx, Lissette Encarnacion says she sometimes forgets the place belongs to her. "I'm thinking I'm at somebody else's [house]," she says. "I'm ringing my own doorbell." Encarnacion used to have a career in banking, and lived in a real home with her son and husband. Then one night everything changed, she says, when her husband came home drunk and angry and threw her off a balcony. "He came home, pulled me from the hair, and just started beating the hell out of me," she says. Encarnacion suffered traumatic brain injury ...
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Brand New Day Presentation at the 2014 ANCOR Conference

By Chris Stevenson posted 05-09-2014
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It was an honor for Cedar Lake to present our "Brand New Day" presentation at the 2014 ANCOR Spring Conference. I am happy to discuss this presentation with anyone interested in creating/re-creating a new DSP-centric culture. My e-mail is cstevenson@cedarlake.org and my cell phone is 502-645-0709. Peace, love and unity.... - Chris P.S. I downloaded the presentation under my shared files.
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State Executives Forum and Dinner

By Mark Davis posted 04-25-2014
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The state executives are going to dinner in Miami on Sunday around 7:00pm. Please let me know if you are planning on attending, so I can get a count for the reservation. Also, we are having a State Executives Forum meeting on Sunday from 1:00 - 3:30pm in room Concerto D. Looking forward to seeing folks there! Mark
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CEO Perspective: Emergence

By Renee Pietrangelo posted 01-09-2014
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This is truly an exciting and interesting time to be alive. Our world is changing at an incredible pace with new frontiers opening up in nearly every aspect of our lives---personal and professional. It’s a period of renaissance and paradigm-shattering, so much so that it’s near impossible to keep up. As a result, we find ourselves on a dizzying merry-go-round, living in the tension between excitement and anxiety, and ping-ponging back and forth—overwhelmed, disconcerted, intellectually and emotionally burdened. The issues at stake are serious, summoning us to a place of awe-full responsibility and an historic nexus of emergence. The word “emergence” has been ...
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Thanks to ANCOR Leaders

By Bonnie-Jean Brooks posted 09-10-2013
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Those of you who use the ACC and, further, those of you who have gone over and above to share your congratulatory messages to and about DSP's deserve special recognition. In these incredibly busy and exhausting days, it takes a concerted effort and a determined leader to take the initiative to go public to share information and to seek out information - particularly at the end of a busy day!!! I am thankful for each of the ACC contributors and have continuing hope for this incredible tool that ANCOR has given us!! We are fortunate to know ANCOR and for it to know us!! Bonnie
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Recognizing Direct Support Professionals: Past, Present & Future

By Joseph Macbeth posted 09-08-2013
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First of all, I'd like to thank our nation's direct support workforce for their commitment and dedication to people with disabilities. Moreover, I'd like to recognize the complex skills and professional values it requires to be an effective direct support professional - one of the most challenging, yet rewarding occupations in the country. I hope all of you receive the due recognition you deserve during National Direct Support Professional Recognition Week and that you take a moment to reflect on the incredible impact that you have on the lives and the personal outcomes of the people that you support. ...
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ANCOR Past-President Dissed by Home Care Association of America!

By Wendy Swager posted 08-29-2013
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ANCOR Past-President Dissed by Home Care Association of America! BY: Wendy Swager (Sokol) Imagine my shock and horror when the COO for the Home Care Association of America (HCAOA) stopped returning my calls and e-mails. One of their staff actually hung up on me! Why? What could possibly cause such behavior? The use of Independent Contractors is challenging many of the basic premises on which some providers and associations have built their organizations. Recently Contractor Management Services (CMS), a third party provider of technology and support for independent contractors was refused vendor or exhibitor status by HCAOA for their ...
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