Allegations of Service Gaps, Lack of Job Supports, Challenge RI Compliance With Consent Decree
/By Gina Macris
this article has been updated
Rhode Island has not expanded job development services to people with developmental disabilities as required by a 2014 federal consent decree, according to a key professional at the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College.
Claire Rosenbaum, the adult services coordinator at the Sherlock Center, filed a statement in U.S. District Court April 6 that says the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) does not include job development as part of its standard package of services. Instead, the department expects them to shift money from other funding categories to do that.
Rosenbaum’s statement helps lay the groundwork for a challenge to a claim by the state that it is in “substantial compliance” with the decree. Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. is to hear evidence in the case Friday, April 8 at 10 a.m.
Separate statements about delays and inadequacies in services, particularly for young people eligible for transitional supports, were filed earlier this week by the Rhode Island Disability Law Center and by Tammy Russo, the mother of a 23-year-old man who receives BHDDH-funded services.
Rosenbaum’s statement concurred that “one of the greatest problems is the gap in services experienced by many individuals with disabilities as they transition from youth services to adult services.”
“I know individuals who have experienced a gap in disability services, spanning anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to a year or more,” she said.
Often, because many providers are refusing new cases, the only option is so-called “self-directed supports”, in which individuals or their families manage specific BHDDH allocations, organizing services and hiring their own direct service workers, Rosenbaum said.
Rosenbaum, who is widely respected in the developmental disability community, has an adult daughter who receives BHDDH-funded services, and her job puts her in touch with about 250 adults with disabilities and their families.
She said the lack of openings for new clients in the direct service system makes it difficult for individuals to get job development services.
Unlike BHDDH, the Office of Rehabilitation Services of the state Department of Human Services provides funding to direct service agencies for job development services. However, it pays a flat rate for each job placement, no matter how extensive the needs of the client. Consequently, the developers tend to work with less challenging candidates for employment, Rosenbaum said.
Direct ORS employment services tend to be limited to job assessments which many clients find to be “excessive and not beneficial to finding employment,” she said.
In another statement filed with the court, Anne M. Mulready, supervising attorney of the Disability Law Center, said Rhode Island law makes youth with disabilities eligible for adult services once they reach 18, but clients say BHDDH does not process their applications until they approach the age of 21.
Mulready currently represents two 19 year-old clients with complex needs whose families each have been waiting about a year for word on eligibility from BHDDH.
“It will take a significant amount of time to plan for and locate appropriate services for these clients,” she said. “Although they are currently in school, BHDDH participation in planning and coordination needs to be occurring now, so that these individuals will not experience gaps in services when they exit high school,” she said in the statement.
In her statement, Russo said she waited two years for BHDDH to find her son, Joey, eligible for services. She searched for five months to find a service provider, because seven of the ten she contacted were not accepting new clients.
Then, BHDDH delayed the start of services until a month after her son’s 21st birthday, which was Jan. 20, 2014, Russo said.
Because her son’s agency was unable to organize a program of community-based supports for Joey, Russo did it herself, putting together a schedule that included exercise at the YMCA, education at the library with workbooks and supplies she provided, as well as bowling and volunteer experiences she arranged through people who knew Joey at school or in the community.
In effect, Russo served as the architect of the “person-centered planning” now required under terms of the consent decree. She said support staff have told her that their employer used the plan she organized for Joey as a model for helping other clients.
Rosenbaum, meanwhile, said that another “persistent problem” is inaccurate assessments of individuals’ needs and correspondingly inadequate allocations of funding.
“I know individuals who have had their (funding) lowered following a reassessment,” she said, despite the fact that the answers were very similar to the original assessment.
“Furthermore, I have heard complaints that some interviewers are not recording the respondents’ answers as given and/or are challenging those responses” during the assessment interviews, Rosenbaum said.
