RI Senate Finance Hearing Highlights Cost Overruns, Challenges, in DD Budgets

By Gina Macris 

Cost overruns are a recurring theme for Rhode Island’s Division of Developmental Disabilities, with expenses for mandated services running  about $4.4 million over budget in the current fiscal year, while $6 million in projected savings group home-related costs  are proving elusive. 

Overall, Governor Gina Raimondo seeks to close out the current fiscal year with a total of $250.6 million in developmental disabilities funding and requests $256.7 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Taken together, the $4.4 million increase she has requested in current spending and the proposed increase of nearly $6.1 million for the next fiscal year run almost $10.5 million more than the existing budget authorized by the General Assembly - $246.2 million.   

At a budget hearing April 4, members of the Senate Finance Committee seemed to understand the challenges faced by the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), but Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, still asked officials for more realistic budget figures in the future.

One case in point was $100,000 in actual savings in costs related to group homes, rather than the $2.6 million cut in state revenue that originally had been projected during the current fiscal year. 

The savings are associated with a shift in residential care from group homes to less costly shared living arrangements in private homes scattered throughout the state, a change that is driven both by budgetary constraints and federal Medicaid rules.

In April of 2016, BHDDH said it would move a total of 100 individuals with developmental disabilities from group homes to shared living by the end of the fiscal year June 30, but it achieved only 27 transfers, DiPalma said. 

For the current fiscal year, the goal is 66 moves. Noting the $2.5 million gap between projected and actual savings, DiPalma said he would have recommended a target of 45 transfers. 

But “the budget is what it is,” he said.

“If you want to move someone, they have to say yes,” DiPalma said. “If they say no, they stay where they are.”

Rebecca Boss, the acting BHDDH director, said, “you are right about the challenges.”

But she added that BHDDH already has 45 commitments from group home residents who have agreed to go into shared living.  

A year ago, the Division of Developmental Disabilities had not yet done a “deep dive” into the shared living program to understand what needed to be done to make it more attractive to consumers, Boss said.  She suggested that since then, officials have identified some issues that have prevented more rapid expansion of the program, but Boss was not specific.

Pressed for more details, she said they would be forthcoming in a month – May 5.  At last count in December, there were 333 residents in shared living arrangements and 1,283 in state or privately-run group homes, according to a Senate fiscal analysis. 

In the next budget, beginning July 1, BHDDH has proposed saving $3.9 million in state revenue related to movement out of group homes, but Boss said she could not guarantee that the department would meet its future budget targets. 

DiPalma also warned Boss that a similar transition away from group home care for children in state custody has shown that, for a time, residential costs actually increase because the state must maintain group housing while it builds its community-based network of home care.

A big part of the savings plan in the next fiscal year is to close a total of five group homes run directly by the state through Rhode Island Community Living and Supports (RICLAS), a division of BHDDH, including two in July, one in October, and two in January, 2018. 

Jim Cenerini, legislative affairs and political action coordinator for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 94, (AFSCME) expressed concern about the closures, which would move 30 residents, or 20 percent of the 150 people in the state-run system, into private care.

He said BHDDH officials have not talked about the closings with the union, which represents several hundred workers staffing the homes. 

Boss said BHDDH officials would be “more than happy” to sit down with the union.

Cenerini said, “We believe RICLAS provides a very vital service as a provider of last resort.”  He maintained that RICLAS residents are not ready to go to shared living arrangements. 

Two years ago, the union negotiated many cost-saving concessions with BHDDH that gave the department much more flexibility in staffing, but BHDDH hasn’t implemented any of the reforms except to hire seasonal workers who are ineligible for benefits, Cenerini said.

RICLAS workers are state employees, many of whom make at least double the poverty-level wages of workers in a parallel system of private agencies under contract with the state to provide most of the developmental disability services.

DiPalma told Cenerini that the “train has left the station” on the shift from congregate care to settings that are more like home. 

The change in Medicaid rules have been influenced by the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the Americans With Disabilities Act requires services for all people with disabilities to be available in the least restrictive environment that is therapeutically appropriate. That environment is presumed to be the community for both daytime and residential services.

“It’s up to us to figure out how to move those people into the community,” DiPalma said, and “how to facilitate the  workers at RICLAS to do other things.”  The conversation should not be about residents remaining in RICLAS homes “because this is what we have,” DiPalma said.

Cenerini emphasized that RICLAS offers continuity of care, something the private system lacks because of low wages and high turnover. “I don’t want to see the destruction of my union,” he said.

About 20 RICLAS workers also host adults with developmental disabilities in their homes as shared living providers, Cenerini said.

One reason BHDDH has a hard time meeting budget targets, Cenerini said, is that “they are asked to do so much with so little.”

Testimony at the hearing reiterated support for a $6 million wage increase in the fiscal year beginning July 1 for private-sector direct care workers, who now earn an average of about $11.14 an hour, according to the latest figures provided by Donna Martin, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island. 

The current hourly average of $11.14 is only slightly higher than the federal poverty level of $9.82 an hour for a single parent household with two children, a profile that represents the typical direct care worker in developmental disability services, she said.

About one in three workers a year leave private agencies, many of them for slightly higher pay in a local market or to work at RICLAS, where they are paid an additional $5 an hour to do the same work, Martin said in written testimony she submitted to the committee.

The budget now in effect gave private-sector workers their first increase in a decade, putting an additional 36 cents an hour in their pockets, before taxes.  

DiPalma has sponsored a resolution that would increase the pay of these workers to $15 an hour in five years – the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2021. (In the House, State Rep. Teresa A. Tanzi has sponsored a similar resolution, which would achieve a $15 hourly rate in three years – by July 1, 2019.)

DiPalma’s and Tanzi’s resolutions also urge the legislature to link future annual raises to the consumer price index so that pay stays ahead of the minimum wage, currently $9.60 an hour. Governor Raimondo has proposed increasing the minimum wage to $10.50 on July 1.   The Senate Finance Committee held a separate hearing on wage increases May 21. (Click here to read related article.)

DiPalma highlighted another feature of the budget that seeks to add a total of $500,000, or $250,000 in state funds, to a supplemental allocation for developmental disability services that he said runs about $20 million to $22 million annually.

These supplemental funds are used when those receiving developmental disability services believe their individual budgets are inadequate and make a successful argument for more money, or when they need a short term boost in care triggered by events like a discharge from a hospital, according to Kerri Zanchi, Director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities.

DiPalma said he concurred with the use of funds to cover short-term extra needs, but he believed $22 million a year, or 10 percent of all service appropriations -  was too high for supplemental appropriations. 

 He called on BHDDH to change the equation that assigns individual funding.

Zanchi said the individual budgets are assigned on the basis of a standardized assessment of an individual’s need called the Supports Intensity Scale. In November, Rhode Island moved to an updated version of the assessment believed to be more accurate and began tracking the results to see if the number of appeals decline in the long run.

DiPalma noted that the current arrangement favors those who have the strongest advocates on their behalf.

Another hearing on budget is scheduled before a subcommittee of the House Finance Committee on Tuesday, April 11, in Room 35 of the State House at the conclusion of that day’s full House session. 

Low Wages Create Labor Shortage in RI DD Services; Advocates Testify for Higher Pay

By Gina Macris

Low wages for workers who provide direct care for adults with disabilities in Rhode Island have led to such a crisis that some agencies lose 80 percent of their front-line staff within six months, although the average annual turnover rate is 33 percent.

To fill the gap, their employers spend millions of dollars in overtime and in training new hires, only to lose them again.

Advocates for the developmental disability service system spelled out the consequences of poverty-level wages for direct care workers during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee March 21.

A Rhode Island College expert submitted written testimony which said that an underpaid workforce results in instability, anxiety, and a diminished quality of life in the people it serves. 

The new developmental disabilities director, Kerri Zanchi, also linked the stability of the workforce to the quality of services and outcomes for the people it serves. 

Governor Gina Raimondo has proposed adding $6.1 million for raises to direct care workers in the budget beginning July 1. If it passes, it would provide the second annual raise –albeit a modest one – for some 4,000 part-time and full-time caregivers.

The first raise was enacted under pressure from federal enforcement of a 2014 consent decree. The $5-million line item added about 36 cents an hour for front-line caregivers, giving them an average of $11.18 an hour retroactive to July 1, 2016, according to Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, the first vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

DiPalma is leading a drive to increase the average wage for direct care workers and home health care workers to $15 an hour by July 1, 2021. Testimony during the hearing indicated that Massachusetts is on track to reach that goal in 2018.

DiPalma also noted that Rhode Island’s minimum wage rose 30 percent between 2012 and 2016, from $7.40 an hour to the current $9.60 an hour, while the average pay for direct care workers increased 1.6 percent during the same period.

Governor Raimondo is seeking a 90-cent increase in the minimum wage, or $10.50 an hour, for the fiscal year that begins July 1.  

The interstate disparity in wages, compounded by the fact that many Rhode Island residents can just as easily work in Massachusetts as in their home state, puts the developmental disability system at a distinct disadvantage in competing for employees.

Rhode Island’s system is “economically inefficient,” said Jim Parisi, spokesman for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, who represents workers at Trudeau Memorial Center, one of about three dozen private developmental disability service providers in the state.

Donna Martin, director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI), said that an average of about 16 percent of jobs go unfilled, forcing employers to use overtime to fill vacant shifts, particularly in situations where safety requires a certain minimum level of staffing.

In some agencies the job vacancy rate is as high as 25 percent, according to Rebecca Boss, the acting director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals.

Martin, meanwhile, said reports from 18 of the 25 CPNRI member organizations indicate they spend a $2 million a year on overtime, suggesting that the total statewide could be higher. Turnover, which includes training new hires, costs an average of about $4900 per person, she said.

A raise this year is expected to be slightly bigger than the average of about 36 cents an hour enacted in the current year. The exact amount is difficult to calculate in advance because the rate the state pays providers reflects wages and some, but not all, overhead costs, Martin said. And overhead costs vary from one provider to another.

The workforce crisis is the biggest single issue her membership faces, Martin noted.  Data she submitted to the committee indicated that the demand for staffers who provide direct support of adults with developmental disabilities is expected to grow 38 percent by 2022.

In written testimony, A. Anthony Antosh, director of the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College, linked the labor shortage to a diminished quality of service for individuals with disabilities – an issue which is at the center of ongoing enforcement efforts of the 2014 federal consent decree.

With some agencies losing more than 80 percent of new hires within six months, Antosh said, workers cite low pay and the complexity of the work as the chief reasons they leave. They must work two or three jobs simply to make ends meet, he said.

A growing body of research documents that a stable, high quality direct support staff produces positive results in the population it supports. Those benefits include “increased personal competence, increased employment, increased social networks and social capital and increased satisfaction with life,” Antosh wrote.

“A direct support workforce destabilized by low wages, limited opportunities for professional development and a lack of a career ladder results in instability and anxiety in the lives of the people they support,” Antosh said.

Those who depend on services have “decreased opportunities for community connection, decreased employment, and a general decrease in quality of service,” Antosh said.

Quality service, with access to community-based employment and non-work activities, are a key goal of the 2014 consent decree and a subsequent court order, which aim to enforce the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

That ruling re-affirmed Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which says that individuals with disabilities are entitled to receive services in the least restrictive environment that is therapeutically appropriate.The decision presumes that the community is the least restrictive environment. 

At right are submitted to the the Senate Finance Committee March 22 by the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, a trade association of 25 private agencies that provide services to adults with developmental disabilities. In the graphic, DSP stands for "Direct Support Professional," the title given to front-line workers. The average hourly wage does not include raises enacted  that took effect July 1, 2016.  

RI Still Lags in DD Consent Decree Compliance, But Shows Progress In Number of Job Placements

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island appears to be meeting almost 60 percent of court-mandated goals in placing adults with developmental disabilities in jobs paying at least minimum wage, according to newly-released figures which track the state’s progress through Sept. 30 of 2016.

The state had found jobs for 363 individuals, or 58.8 percent of the 651 placements required at that time, according to compliance figures the state submitted to an independent court monitor in accordance with a 2014 federal consent decree that requires community-based day services to correct violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

For one group of individuals protected by the consent decree- those in segregated day programs – the state has made triple the number of required placements. But for other groups, the going has been slower. Only about 22 percent of special education students "exiting" high school got jobs, far short of the 100 percent employment goal. The figures for a third group - adults who had been in so-called sheltered workshops – show 87 percent compliance with the benchmark for job placement at the end of September.

Source: State of Rhode Island 

Figures at the bottom of the table, set against a pale blue background, allow comparisons among the latest available job placement numbers Sept. 30 and those at the end of the first and second quarters of 2016.

It’s not surprising that the state does not meet overall compliance with the consent decree, Rhode Island began focusing on compliance only in the last 12 months – two years after the agreement went into effect,

In May, 2016, Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of U.S. District Court reinforced the consent decree with an order addressing numerous shortcomings, including an inability to even get an accurate count of the number of individuals protected by the agreement.

McConnell required the state to create a “live” database, always up-to-date, on the population protected by the consent decree – at latest count 3,456 teenagers and adults – that the monitor and the U.S. Department of Justice could use to gauge compliance.

Such an up-to-the-minute database is in the works but has not yet been completed. In the interim, the  Executive Office of Health and Human Services has coordinated a cooperative effort involving three state agencies and the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College to connect different sources of data so that the state can make detailed reports to the court, albeit with a time lag. The three state state agencies participating in the combined data effort are the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals; the Department of Education, and the Office of Rehabilitation Services.

The ten-year consent decree has progressively stiffer requirements, with the latest deadlines occurring Jan. 1. It is not yet known how well the state has done against these most recent benchmarks.

 Charles Moseley, the monitor,  has concluded that the state has “significantly improved its ability and capacity to gather, aggregate and analyze” data required by the consent decree.

Moseley submitted the state’s figures to McConnell March 3, supplementing two earlier reports. One made recommendations on stepping up job placements and other aspects of compliance. .The other made sweeping recommendations that would put emphasis on the needs of of individuals in the funding process for developmental disability services and would reorganize operations of the state Division of Developmental Disabilities to incorporate a seamless and continual quality improvement effort. Both reports have implications for greater costs.

All of Moseley’s recent reports are likely to come up during the next open-court hearing on the consent decree, now scheduled for 10 a.m. March 10 before McConnell. (Two hearings in January and February had been cancelled.)

The progress the state reported as of Sept. 30 reflect the efforts of privately-run service providers who for years have been working under significant financial and bureaucratic constraints that make it difficult for them to hunt for jobs for clients and support them once they find employment. 

Front-line workers make poverty-level wages, despite a pay increase approved by the General Assembly in 2016. The legislature also set aside $6.8 million to pay bonuses for new job placements and job retention and for specialized training completed by direct care workers. But that program was still on the drawing boards when the latest data was collected.

In his report on data, Moseley noted that the state did not reach goals for career development plans and benefits counseling. Benefits counseling is necessary to ensure individuals make informed choices about the way particular jobs would affect their government benefits, like supplemental security income (SSI.) Career development plans consider long-range goals, and the intermediate steps necessary to achieve them, in a way that aligns activities with individuals’ needs and interests.

Overall, about 43 percent of the entire consent decree population had career development plans. In one of the earlier reports to McConnell, Moseley was critical of the quality of those career development plans. 

Source: Charles Moseley, U.S. District Court Monitor

In the table above, "youth transition" refers to high school special education students likely to qualify for adult services, and "youth exit"refers to adults who have left school since 2013. Other categories refer to older adults who historically have been in segregated day programs or sheltered workshops. The letters CDP are an acronym for career development plan. 

Another table, below, shows that the state had complied with a requirement to provide benefits counseling to young adults with jobs but had failed to similarly advise more than half of older adults who had obtained jobs after 2012. The letters BP are an acronym for benefit plan.

Source: Charles Moseley, U.S. District Court Monitor

The state reported that those who had jobs worked an average of nearly 12 hours a week and made an average of about $10.00 an hour. The consent decree says the average work week should be 20 hours.  

The consent decree requires the state to integrate adults with developmental disabilities in their communities to comply with the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which reaffirmed the rights of citizens with disabilities to receive services in the least restrictive environment that is therapeutically appropriate under provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act. In Rhode Island in 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice found an over-reliance on sheltered workshops paying sub-minimum wages and on isolated day programs that did not offer their clients purposeful activities.

Click here for the monitor's data report.

Click here for the data the state submitted to the monitor.

Madden to Leave RI Consent Decree Post; Lawyer Dianne Curran Named New Coordinator

By Gina Macris

Mary Madden, the coordinator of Rhode Island’s efforts to comply with a federal consent decree mandating a transformation of developmental disability services, will step down from that post at the end of March.

Mary Madden                          File Photo

In her place will be Dianne Curran, a longtime disability rights lawyer who has worked both in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, most recently as a consultant to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The announcement was part of a public community forum at the North Providence Senior Center Feb. 23 that also catalogued a series of system-wide changes undertaken in recent months, even though developmental disability services still fall short of the funding parents said is necessary to individualize supports for their sons and daughters.

And the audience was reminded that family stories are the ones that make the biggest impact with members of the General Assembly, who in the next several months will consider increases in the current budget and one for the fiscal year which begins July 1.

Curran, al awyer for both Rhode Island Legal Services and the RI Protection and Advocacy System (now the Disability Law Center) during the 1980s, also has served Massachusetts state government in various legal positions in education, human services and developmental disabilities departments. Her lengthy experience in that state includes a brief stint coordinating activities in response to consent decrees affecting adults with developmental disabilities and mental illness.

Madden, a veteran developmental disabilities professional in the private sector, became consent decree coordinator for Rhode Island in January, 2016, at a time when the state was just beginning to craft a response to the 2014 federal consent decree.

 On Thursday, Madden said that continuing as consent decree coordinator “was not in the long-term plan.”  Madden said she would not have returned to graduate studies in disabilitiesand public policy at Rhode Island College if she were not satisfied that that the state had gained momentum in responding to the consent decree. 

Most recently, Rhode Island recruited Kerri Zanchi as director of developmental disabilities after a six-month vacancy in that post.

Zanchi is a career administrator in developmental disability services, who, like Curran, has extensive experience in Massachusetts. She told the audience at Thursday’s forum that she was drawn to the Rhode Island job because of the state’s commitment to community-based services and the opportunity to make lasting change as the state shifts away from isolated day programs and sheltered workshops to comply with the consent decree. The decree requires the state to comply with the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that services for all persons with disabilities must be desegregated in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Thursday’s session, attended by about 30 people, was notable for its low-key, conversational tone, a sharp departure from the angry complaints that dominated such meetings during 2016.

In the last six months, developmental disability officials reported, they have made several improvements, including the following:

• speeded up the application process for adult services for individuals with developmental disabilities and adopted a policy to determine eligibility for adult services by the time special education students turn 17

• named a full time transition coordinator,  Carolee Leach, to work with high schools and the families of their special education students in preparing for adult life

• implemented a modest raise of about 36 cents an hour for direct care workers, as directed by the General Assembly

• introduced revisions to an assessment process used in determining individual funding allocations

• rolled out a supported employment incentive program for private service providers whohave placed 20 adults with developmental disabilities in jobs in the community since January

An independent court monitor in the consent decree case, however, has said in a recent report that the state must do much more to comply with the consent decree. (Click here for article on monitor’s latest report.)

At the meeting,  Zanchi, Madden and several other officials, including Jennifer Wood, General Counsel to the Office of Health and Human Services, heard from parents who said their adult children are lacking individualized community-based services.

Pat Abbate

Pat Abbate, who has a 46 year-old son with significant challenges, said the agency which serves him has good intentions but does not have enough financial resources to individualize services in the community

Tammy Russo, who has a 21 year-old son with disabilities, said he gets “no community services except for me.”

Greg Mroczek said 70 percent of his daughter’s program is in a day center isolated from the community.

Earlier in February, the same developmental disability officials heard a similar theme – a lack of adequate funding - from a mother who said she was forced into managing her daughter’s services because no agency would take her. Mary Genco said she asked 19 agencies, and each one said it had no nurse who wanted to deal with her daughter’s medical needs.

Genco, who is home with her daughter nearly all the time, said she represents growing minority of aging parents who are being “worn out” by adult children with extensive medical or behavioral support needs.

On Thursday, Pat Abbate put numbers on the funding gap. She said – and a check of the state’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) website confirms – that funding for developmental disabilities lags behind the high of $260 million enacted by the General Assembly for the fiscal year between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008. At this time last year, the enacted budget was just shy of $231 million, according to OMB documents.

In response to a federal court order which said the state did not allocate enough money to implement the consent decree, Governor Gina Raimondo later pushed for increases, approved by the General Assembly, which boosted the bottom line to $246.2 million in the current fiscal year.

In her most recent budget proposal in January, Raimondo seeks an additional $4.4 million to finish the current fiscal year, for a total of $250.6 million. For the next fiscal year, beginning July 1, Raimondo has asked the General Assembly for $256.7 million.

Heather Mincey, a developmental disabilities administrator, said, “With our budget we try to advocate for as much money as we can.”

Brian Gosselin, chief strategic officer at OHHS, explained that the various departments of state government are active in their own advocacy, working with OMB and the Governor’s office, from July through December. But the state agencies don’t control the allocations, he said.

With the governor’s budget proposal now in the hands of the General Assembly, Gosselin and Mincey agreed, it’s vital that the community speak up.

“It’s important for families and advocates to be out there to speak to their representatives and let them know what your needs are,” Mincey said. 

A member of the audience, who said he works for a developmental disability service agency in Massachusetts, drove home Mincey's and Gosselin’s message.

The voice of families and advocates for developmental disability services is much stronger in Massachusetts than it is in Rhode Island, he said.

“When a family member calls up and gives them (legislators) a story, it makes such an impact,” he said. “I don’t think enough people get that point” in Rhode Island.

One In Six DD Jobs in RI Goes Unfilled; Raises Would Ease Crisis and Improve Service Quality

image by capitol tv 

Kevin Nerney of the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council, left, and Maureen Gaynor, second from right, share pleasantries just before their testimony before the House Finance Committee on Feb. 8. Looking on are Gaynor's support worker, Melanie Monti, and Emmanuel Falck of the Service Employees International Union State Council.  Image by RI Capitol TV. 

By Gina Macris

Raising the pay of Rhode Islanders who serve adults with developmental disabilities is not only about helping these poverty-level workers pay their bills, according to testimony before the House Finance Committee Feb. 8.

The proposed raises also will reduce staff turnover and, in turn, improve the quality of life for some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens, Donna Martin, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI), told the legislators. 

Kerri Zanchi, the new director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities, agrees with Martin’s assessment. Zanchi says the pay hike is not only an “investment in the direct service professional, but an investment in our community" and in high quality services.  

She estimates that the wage increase will amount to an average of 42 cents an hour, and says that provider agencies are now experiencing a staff turnover rate of about 33 percent.

Carol Dorros, the mother of a 21-year-old man with behavioral issues and other complex problems, knows firsthand the value of support staff retention. When her son was still in high school and receiving some adult services from a private agency, his support worker changed four times during a single academic year. As a result, he made “no progress” from September to June, Dorros said.

 Maureen Gaynor rolled up to the speakers’ table in a power chair and used a computerized voice to speak the text she had written with a “headstick,” a pointer attached to a band around her head.

These people deserve higher pay, Gaynor said, explaining that support staff sometimes must help with the most intimate care, such as bathing, dressing and using the toilet.

And she reminded the legislators that she would not have been able to attend the hearing without an aide willing to drive her to the State House and get her to the basement hearing room.

After she spoke, Kevin Nerney of the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council reinforced her remarks:  “When you help someone eat, drink or bathe, you need to have a really good relationship with that person. We’re not talking about folding shirts at the Gap or flipping burgers at McDonald's,” said Nerney.

At AccessPoint RI, a service provider, the starting salary is $10 an hour, or $22,000 a year, said the agency’s executive director, Tom Kane. The average pay was $10.82 an hour until the current fiscal year, when the General Assembly set aside $5 million for raises for developmental disability workers – the first pay increases since 2006, Kane said.

The added funding resulted in a 36-cent hourly increase, raising the average to $11.18, according to calculations made by service providers and others.

When Kane reviewed the the roster of employees at the time his agency processed the raises last fall, he said he was heartbroken to find a 30-year employee who was to receive a total of $13.10, with the pay bump.

Kane and others indicated they believe that a “15 in 5” campaign to raise the pay of direct care workers to $15 in five years (by July 1, 2021), is simply not enough.

Kane alluded to a drive launched by State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, last fall when he asked Governor Raimondo to include a raise for direct care workers in her budget proposal for the next fiscal year.. While she has done so, her $6.2 million set-aside for wages is about $$600,000 shy of what DiPalma requested.

Kane said raises should not only be based on a percentage increase.

 “A four or five percent increase on an insufficient wage is an insufficient increase,” he said.

If the minimum wage increases to $10.50 an hour, as Governor Raimondo has proposed, “and we give 5 percent” raises, Kane said, “we’re paying minimum wage again.”

Kane took issue with figures presented by Linda Haley of the House Fiscal Staff that the raises in the current budget also bumped up pay for supervisory personnel.

He said the raises all went to direct care workers, (as stipulated in current state budget.)  Some agencies, including AccessPoint, used other funding sources to provide raises or bonuses to supervisory employees.

At AccessPoint, Kane said, front-line supervisors spend half their time doing direct care anyway.

“It is incredibly important that this bill passes, hopefully with more money in it,” to support not only those providing direct care but people who perform other important tasks, like writing clients’ state-mandated individual support plans, which are akin to road maps for services that are specific to each client. Most of these employees “have not had a raise in 11 years,” he said. “I don’t know why they stay.”

Emmanuel Falck of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) State Council represents 270 workers at the Arc of Blackstone Valley. One of them, a 52- year-old woman with 20 years’ experience in the field, used to be able to make ends meet by working 60 to 65 hours a week, he said.

But after an 18-month bout with cancer, the most she can now work is 20 hours a week. And the last vacation she had was three days in Washington, D.C., in 2000, Falck said.

He said the proposed 42-cent increase to the hourly rate would be much appreciated, but the state needs to move faster to raise workers’ pay to a living wage.

“I urge this committee to bump it up as fast as possible,” he said, proposing a $15 hourly wage by 2019 instead of 2021. As it is, direct support workers living in Rhode Island will be able to cross the state line to neighboring Massachusetts and do the same work for $15 an hour on July 1, 2018, Falck said.

Donna Martin, the CPNRI director, said that developmental disability service providers face a “tremendous crisis” in competing for the same pool of workers who serve elderly clients, thanks to a growing number of aging baby-boomers.

On average, the 27 providers belonging to CPNRI cannot fill one in six job openings, creating a vacancy rate of about 16 percent, she said. During exit interviews, workers say that they love their jobs but can’t feed their families with what they are paid, according to Martin.

As a result of the vacancies, employers are forced to spend money on overtime that they would rather put into worker pay and training, Martin said.

“I appreciate your sensitivity to the struggles of our staff,” Martin told the finance committee members.  “They are where the rubber meets the road when it comes to quality.”

Chris Semonelli of Middletown, the father of a 14-year-old girl with autism, put some historical context around the discussion of the wage proposal.

From 2006 through 2011, the budget for developmental disability services was reduced 20 percent, Semonelli said, quoting a profile of the system written by the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College in 2013. And the services are not designed with an eye toward results. In the current design, more money gives more of the same service, he said.

That said, Semonelli said he strongly supports Governor Raimondo’s proposed wage increase in the next budget, as well as the “15 in 5” campaign. The governor’s plan for the next fiscal year “is a start,” said Semonelli, who also is co-director of an advocacy group called Friends of the Disabled on Aquidneck Island.

Although Wednesday’s hearing sounded like a budget discussion, it focused only on Article 23 – one of 24 chapters in the overall fiscal package Raimondo has submitted to the General Assembly.

The provision would require a one-time increase in the base pay of direct care workers, “in an amount to be determined by the appropriations process” and also require the Office of Management and Budget to perform an audit to ensure that the raises go only to those workers. 

Plan To Boost DD Worker Pay in RI Gets House Finance Hearing Wednesday

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposed pay raise for workers providing direct care to adults with developmental disabilities will get a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Finance Committee Wednesday, Feb. 8.

Raimondo has set aside $6 million for 5 percent wage increases for these workers, who are now paid an average of $11.18 an hour. Her proposal would increase their hourly pay by about 56 cents, to an average of $11.74.

The governor's budget says that poverty-level wages for these workers have resulted in a “hiring crisis” that “impedes the ability of community agencies to implement the state’s obligations” under provisions of a federal consent decree mandating reforms in the developmental disability service system to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Low wages have led to annual turnover estimated at 33 percent,  with agencies experiencing staff vacancy rates of up to 25 percent, leading to high overtime costs and worker burnout, according to the budget document. The shortage of workers in Rhode Island is all the more challenging because neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut pay about $1 to 2 dollars an hour more for the same work..

Moreover, Massachusetts has committed to a $15 hourly rate by 2018 for direct care workers in field of developmental disabilities. There is a similar drive in Rhode Island to raise workers’ pay to $15 in five years, but the budget provision to be heard Wednesday deals only with the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The hearing is scheduled after the full House ends it session, he end of the House session, about 4:30 to 4:45 p.m. and it will be held in Room 35 in the basement of the State House.

Kevin Nerney, spokesman for the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council, urges individuals concerned about the stability of the developmental disability service system to attend the hearing or write or call members of the legislature.  Click here for the meeting agenda, which includes a link to the full text of the proposal to increase wages, as well as another budget article to be heard the same day in connection with the duties of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals in treating substance abuse.

Written testimony also may be submitted to the House Finance Committee through its clerk, Christopher O’Brien, at cobrien@rilegislature.gov.

Governor's Budget Would Add Total of $10 million For Developmental Disabilities Through June, 2018

By Gina Macris

A new $6.8-million incentive program, intended to encourage service providers to help Rhode Islanders with developmental disabilities get and keep jobs, will become a permanent fixture of the annual budget, according to Jennifer Wood, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services.

That is one of several areas of Governor Gina Raimondo’s budget proposal that indicates the state is moving to increase services for individuals with developmental disabilities in keeping with a 2014 consent decree, which requires Rhode Island to expand their access to employment and other community activity over a ten-year period.  

Wood and other key officials, who are involved in reinventing the state’s developmental disability service system, elaborated on Raimondo’s proposed budget and the way it reflects evolving trends and programs during an hour-long interview with Developmental Disability News on Jan. 24. 

Between now and the end of the next fiscal year, which concludes June 30, 2018, Raimondo proposes to increase spending for developmental disability services by about $10 million, excluding restricted funds and capital expenses.

Of that total, $6 million in federal and state Medicaid funds would be used for five-percent increases to the average wages of direct support workers, and much of the rest would reflect more expensive levels of services needed by individuals with developmental disabilities than have been recognized in the past.

Overall, Raimondo asked the General Assembly to increase the current allocation for developmental disability services by nearly $4.4 million in this fiscal year, which ends in June, from about $246.2 million to $250.6 million.

Excluding restricted and capital accounts, the added amount available for services before June 30 would be nearly $3.8 million, according to a budget breakdown provided by EOHHS. In the budget cycle which ends in June, 2018, the Governor would add a total of about about $6.1 million, for $256.7 million in all spending on developmental disability services. Excluding the restricted and capital funds, the increase would be about $6.6 million.  

All Funds vs Operating Budget

TABLE COURTESY OF EOHHS

    GR=state funds     FF= federal funds

The primary reasons that developmental disability services are expected to be more costly include:

•  The need for a better-paid, more stable workforce, funded with a 5 percent increases in direct care wages, or a total of $6 million 

• · Additional staff time spent on job hunting and job support for their clients, reflected in the new $6.8 million individualized supported employment program that is already part of approved spending

• A new version of the process for assessing individual needs appears to indicate that more supports are required than have been recognized in the past.

Supported Employment Program Has Begun Operations

Until now, all individuals with developmental disabilities who sought help in finding jobs in the community had to give up other kinds of services, with the dollar value of their personal funding authorizations remaining the same. But those enrolled in the new “person-centered” supported employment program, now accepting applicants, will get job support in addition to their other services, according to an EOHHS spokeswoman. The program is expected to involve about 200 clients.

The supported employment program was funded by the General Assembly with a $6.8 million allocation for the current fiscal year. But that sum has been untouched while the state has figured out how the program will work.

The program is poised to make its first disbursements to service providers, including incentive payments for the placement of two individuals in jobs in January. said Tracey Cunningham, Chief Employment Specialist in the Division of Disabilities at the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH).

The original $6.8 million allocation is expected to fund the incentive program into the second half of the fiscal year ending in June, 2018, according to an EOHHS spokeswoman.

The program staff will evaluate the results of the first operational year to determine how much money it will need to continue, said Brian Gosselin, the Chief Strategy Officer at EOHHS. Wood promised assured continuous funding for the program.

“What we hope to learn in the first 12 months of this brand new program is what impact $6.8 million will have,” Gosselin said. It provides one-time incentive payments when staff complete a specific training program and clients are placed in jobs. The program also pays bonuses for employment retention, in two installments, after 90 and 180 days.  

Gosselin said he and his colleagues will determine whether the $6.8 million allocation was enough and will identify the successful features of the program that can be used in the second year.

He and Wood were asked why the 22 providers participating in the program must continue to use a fee-for-service reimbursement model which requires them to bill for daytime services in 15-minute increments.

Gosselin said that is the funding model that the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services has approved for daytime developmental disability services in Rhode Island.

“In order to make any adjustments to that methodology we would have to go through a very long approval process with the federal government,” he said.

But he emphasized that the new performance-based aspect of the incentive program is “what we hope to learn from.”

A discussion of the fee-for-service model and whether it works for Rhode Island is part of a larger conversation – redesigning and renewing the state’s Medicaid waiver, which is expected to occur in 2018, Gosselin said.

Wood emphasized that she didn’t want to conflate two things. “One is Medicaid billing” and the other is “programmatic contracting,” she said.

“What we set forth to do was to create the first instance in Rhode Island of performance-based contracting for outcome-based services provided to individuals with developmental disabilities. We are super-excited about that,” she said. “That’s a whole new direction for this world.”

Wood also elaborated on the design and roll-out of supported employment in the context of a U.S. District Court order reinforcing the 2014 consent decree, which had set an Aug. 1 deadline for implementation of the performance-based supported employment program.

“Implementation is an ongoing activity,” Wood said. “We met the requirements of the Court order by filing with the monitor and the Court and the DOJ (U.S. Department of Justice) the programmatic requirements” for the supported employment services program last summer, Wood said. The “person-centered” program is designed to put the needs and preferences of the client at the center of the job-hunting and support process.

Since the summer, state officials have met with providers, drawn up contracts and finalized them, she said. The next phase of implementation is enrolling clients, Wood said.

“We are actually quite proud of the fact that we can bring this program up in what in government circles is lightning speed,” she said, “and to do it in a really reliable, viable, and responsible way.”  .

“I know it may not appear that way to the public,” Wood said.  She apparently alluded to public criticism of the program, which was not completely fleshed out when it was first presented to providers in November and was not widely understood by families who direct individualized services for a loved one.

Wage Increase Intended to Help Stabilize Workforce

Governor Raimondo’s proposed $6 million for wage increases for direct care workers would provide about 5 percent more in the hourly rate, before taxes, in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

For the current fiscal year, the General Assembly approved about $5 million for a pay raise which boosted the average hourly rate from $10.82 to $11.18.   Another 5 percent would raise the average hourly rate by 56 cents to $11.74.

Governor Raimondo’s latest proposal also would provide an increase for employer-related costs for direct care workers, Wood said. 

Raimondo had been asked to include another pay increase for direct care workers in her budget plan from State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, First Vice Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

DiPalma said in a recent telephone interview that he considers Raimondo’s wage proposal for Fiscal 2018 the first step in a five-year effort to raise direct care salaries to $15 an hour.

In the meantime, the minimum wage may well be on the rise as well. The Governor’s budget proposal would increase it from $9.60 to $10.50, while Rep. Leonidas P. Raptakis, (D- Coventry, West Greenwich, and East Greenwich) has countered with a $10 minimum wage bill.

 DiPalma was asked whether a $15 hourly rate would be enough for the direct care workers in five years.

He said he plans to introduce legislation this year to link the wages of direct care workers to the consumer price index.

“We can’t tie the hands of future legislatures,” by committing them to specific dollar amounts in advance, DiPalma said.

“It’s a case of wanting people to have an appreciation for the intent of what we want to do” in placing value on the work of those who care for some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens, he said.  

A spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services said DiPalma and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, who backs the so-called “15 in 5” plan, “have been important partners in advocating for investments in our direct care workforce.”

“We look forward to working with our partners in the General Assembly to implement our second wage increase this year, as well as increases over multiple years as possible,” said the spokeswoman, Sophie O'Connell.

A year ago, a conference hosted by the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College concluded that higher wages are a critical component in stabilizing the direct care workforce nationwide. In Rhode Island, the average annual turnover is about one third, according to the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island. That means that an adult with developmental disabilities, who relies on a good relationship with caregivers, can expect that every year, one out of every three staffers will  to the job.

Revised Individual Assessment Suggests Greater Cost

Unexpected  increases in billing from private service providers, as well as higher projections for future costs, would add an additional $5 million to federal and state-funded Medicaid-services for existing clients in the current fiscal year, according to the Governor's budget brief. (Some of that net increase would be offset by other savings.) 

In November, the Division of Developmental Disabilities began using an updated version of an assessment called the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) in determining the needs of individual clients. Those assessments are used to assign individual funding authorizations for support services.

“I personally am really thrilled” over the implementation of the new version, called the SIS-A, Wood said. “I know all my colleagues in government feel the same way about it.”

She acknowledged that “there have been all sorts of questions in the past about the validity and reliability of the state’s approach to implementing the SIS.”

And it’s an emotional topic because it’s not just an evaluation, but one linked to funding supports for a loved one, she said.

Since the SIS was implemented in 2011, time-consuming appeals of the results and the corresponding funding levels have become common, and appeals were often granted.

In 2014, the DOJ criticized the way the SIS was being implemented in the findings that laid the groundwork for the consent decree.

“The need to keep consumers’ resource allocations within budget may influence staff to administer the SIS in a way that reaches the pre-determined budgetary result,” the DOJ said at the time. 

In the recent interview, Wood said, “We feel much more comfortable and confident about the validity” of the SIS-A.

As it has been explained to her by the experts, she said, the new versions include refined questions that address some of the more complex needs that “people did not feel were being captured in the original version.”

Wood indicated that in general, higher scores on the SIS-A have  prompted developmental disability service officials to project higher individual funding authorizations. 

Apart from three new questions asking whether a client has hypertension, allergies or diabetes, the SIS-A adopts a risk assessment which includes five overarching questions with multiple parts intended to gauge critical health needs, self-injurious behavior or community safety issues. The questions on the risk assessment were released by the Division of Developmental Disabilities in the last week. Professionals say that with proper support, such risks can be overcome.

A lot of effort already has gone into retraining interviewers, Wood said, although “it will take us two to three years to find our way fully in this new assessment.”

Heather Mincey, social services administrator in the Division of Developmental Disabilities, said the training program has addressed the way interviewers ask questions. The Division of Developmental Disabilities is trying to be responsive to families, clients, and service providers who may not feel like they’re being heard or are unsure what kind of information the interviewer is trying to elicit, she said.

At the same, the Division of Developmental Disabilities is continuing an initiative begun a year ago to save about $1.7 million in Medicaid funding, including almost  $846,000 in state funds, from existing individual funding authorizations that exceed levels indicated in past SIS assessments.

There were so many complaints about the SIS in the latter part of 2014 and the first months of 2015 that BHDDH suspended an effort to rein in the exceptions in the fiscal year that ran from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016.  But the initiative to  to reduce those exceptions resumed for the current fiscal year, which began last July.

Wood said that budget figures for the current fiscal year and the one ending June 30, 2018, twice listing $845,750 in savings from realignment of individual funding authorizations, don’t represent a new initiative, but a continuation of the one already underway.

The appeal process remains an option for those who disagree with their allocations.

A new policy enacted by the state last July to respond to a judicial order says that all SIS assessments will be based solely on support needs. It also says that only the Director of Developmental Disabilities has the authority to grant authorizations that exceed SIS levels. Until now, appeals have been decided by a team of administrators.

Wood and other state officials have said they hope the SIS-A will result in a reduction in the number of appeals.

Raimondo To Propose Wage Increase for DD and Home Healthcare Workers in Next Budget

By Gina Macris 

(This article has been corrected. Please see the note at the end.) 

In her State of the State address Tuesday, Jan. 17, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo said that her budget for the next fiscal year will include a second round of raises for home health care workers and those who provide direct support for adults with developmental disabilities.

Raimondo said that in 2016, the state gave homecare and direct care workers “their first raise in nearly a decade.” She acknowledged the leadership of Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed in that effort.

“And I propose that we give them another raise this year. It will make us more competitive with Massachusetts and help us make sure we have the highest quality people taking care of our Rhode Island families,” Raimondo said.

In 2016, the Governor and the General Assembly faced pressure from the U.S. District Court to put more money into developmental disability services.

After an evidentiary hearing in the spring, Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. ruled that there was not enough money in the state budget to comply with provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act which require community integration of individuals with disabilities. At the same time, he did not say how much money was lacking,

The General Assembly ultimately approved a budget amendment submitted by Raimondo that added $5 million for developmental disability wages, raising the hourly rate from $10.82 to $11.18. Half is Medicaid money and half is state revenue.

Rhode Island’s minimum wage is $9.60 an hour, although Raimondo signaled on Tuesday that her budget will contain a proposal to raise it to $10.50 an hour. 

On Tuesday, Raimondo gave no fiscal details of her plan for raises. She will unveil her budget proposal tomorrow, Jan. 19, at 4 p.m.

But her speech indicates that she has at least opened the door to a call from State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, for a five-year commitment to increase the hourly wage of developmental disability workers to $15.

DiPalma has asked the Governor to add 76 cents in the average hourly rate to increase it to $11.94 in the next budget. That would mark the first installment in the five-hear plan, according to DiPalma. For developmental disability workers alone, he said, the cost would be an estimated $6.8 million in fiscal 2018..

DiPalma, first vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, unveiled his so-called “15 in 5” plan last October with the backing of Paiva Weed and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Daniel DaPonte.

(This article has been updated to say that wage increases for direct care workers proposed by Governor Raimondo for Fiscal 2018 would be the first installment in a five-year plan to raise their pay to $15 an hour. The original version incorrectly said the initiative marked the second installment in the "15 in 5" plan. )

Toward a Smoother Transition: RI Will Decide Early, By Age 17, Who Will Qualify for Adult DD Services

By Gina Macris

(This article has been updated.) 

For some Rhode Islanders with developmental disabilities, the shift between high school and the adult world has been likened to falling off a cliff.

Now, changes are underway to lay the groundwork for a smoother transition from high school to adult living, the latest being a new policy that the state will accept applications from individuals aged 16 and will determine their eligibility by the time they turn 17.

But it remains to be seen how far the state gets in delivering on its promise to a federal court to find jobs for every eligible young adult who can and wants to work by next June 30.  

One potential problem is that, despite small raises recently granted to direct care workers, their employers still may not be able to hire the staff necessary to add new clients. 

New, slightly higher reimbursement rates to private service providers reflect the raises but do not address continuing shortfalls in overhead costs borne by employers, according to a spokeswoman for some two dozen agencies.

For years, private providers have had trouble recruiting and retaining competent staff. A new employment incentive program, with a few exceptions, requires agencies to use existing funding to train workers, if necessary, and make job placements before collecting one-time bonuses. 

According to evidence presented in U.S. District Court last April, young adults with developmental disabilities have been dismissed abruptly from high school on their 21st birthdays and have tended to sit at home for weeks or months because adult services were not in place.

Rhode Island law says individuals with developmental disabilities are eligible for adult services at age 18, although decisions on eligibility often have been made a few months before the young people turned 21.

With many agencies declining to accept new clients, families found it difficult and time-consuming to arrange services.

When services finally were pulled together, they often fell short of participants’ and families’ expectations, according to what U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell heard in April.

Since the April hearing, the General Assembly has enacted a law sponsored by the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Daniel DaPonte, that requires school districts to keep those 21-year-olds in class until the end of the academic year.

More recently, the Executive Office of Human Services (EOHHS) has updated plans to better identify, enroll, and serve young adults eligible for developmental disability services provided by the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) and the Office of Rehabilitation Services (ORS). Those plans include the new “eligibility determination by 17” policy.

In a dramatic departure from past practice, parents of youngsters who are likely to be eligible will be encouraged to apply for adult services when their sons and daughters turn 16.

Consent Decree Drives Change

The changes respond to requirements of a 2014 federal consent decree which aims to move adults with developmental disabilities out of sheltered workshops and segregated day programs that violate the Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1999, the high court found that services for individuals with disabilities must be provided in the least restrictive environment that is therapeutically appropriate, with that environment presumed to be the community.

During the latest judicial review of the consent decree in September, an independent court monitor, Charles Moseley, noted that since the consent decree went into effect in April, 2014, the state has failed to meet targets for placing young adults in regular jobs in the community, with the necessary supports. 

By July 1, 2016, the state was required to have placed all young adults who have left high school during the 2013-2014 academic year or later. At the time, 151 people were reported to be eligible, but the state’s total number of placements was 29.

Rather than hold a contempt hearing against the state, Judge McConnell has deferred to Moseley, who said was confident he could work with state officials to meet the employment goals.

Complicating the issue, the number of young adults in question has risen since July from 151 to 259. The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) has updated its count of individuals with developmental disabilities who left school during the 2015-2016 school year and will continue to do so through June 30, 2017.

RIDE also has promised to expand the categories of individuals whose names it reports to BHDDH to more accurately reflect the total population of young people likely protected by the consent decree, according to Moseley’s most recent report to Judge McConnell Nov. 1.

Since the consent decree went into effect in 2014, RIDE has reported to BHDDH only the names of those with developmental disabilities who turn 21 and leave school.

Going forward, its count will include all those between the ages of 14 and 21 who have developmental disabilities, autism, or multiple disabilities that can be expected to restrict their ability to function independently as adults. The monitor wants RIDE to identify all those students by Nov. 15.

In the meantime, BHDDH, ORS, and RIDE will work together to notify all affected families of their protected status under terms of the consent decree and give them information about applying for services. (Click here for eligibility criteria in state law.) 

General Assembly Increased DD Budget

To shore up the state’s ability to provide services once adults are found eligible, the General Assembly has approved an hourly wage increase of 36 cents for direct care workers – a total of $5 million – and allocated another $6.8 million to foster supported employment.

In addition RI Senate leaders have said they want to raise the current average wage of front line workers from $11.18 to $15 an hour over five years.

But the state still faces continuing consent decree deadlines for placing adults with developmental disabilities in jobs, including about 50 former sheltered workshop employees by Jan. 1, as well as a yet-to-be–determined number of eligible young adults by June 30.  

The new $6.8 million supported employment program expects to begin disbursing funds in mid-November, according to an EOHHS document attached to Moseley’s latest filing with the court.

The program requires providers to have specially-trained employment teams in place to quality for the program and begin receiving a series of one-time bonuses. The bonuses reward the certification of employment specialists, job placements, and job retention for six months with totals that vary from about $3,500 to $15,750 per person, depending on the client’s age and the complexity of the disability.

The recent wage increases

The recent wage increases cover payroll–related taxes but do not add to the state’s reimbursement to private agencies for other aspects of employee overhead costs-taxes. Nor do the raises increase the pay of front-line supervisors or mid-level managers, according to Donna Martin., executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, an association of 26 agencies.

Martin says the state allows agencies  35 percent of direct care workers’ salaries for such overhead costs, but CPNRI data “shows actual employee-related expense is in excess of 60 percent.”

Last spring, she told the General Assembly that her membership operates at an average loss of $5,500 a year for each employee.

do not change state’s reimbursement to private agencies for employer-related taxes and other costs, according to Donna Martin, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, an association of 26 agencies.

Last spring, she told the General Assembly that her membership operates at an average loss of $5,500 for each employee.

Because many agencies are not expanding their staff or accepting new clients, the parents of newly-eligible young adults increasingly are turning to so-called “self-directed” services, which allow them to design customized programs for their sons and daughters, a time-consuming process. The parents are responsible for organizing a program within their budget and choosing and supervising workers. A fiscal intermediary pays the bills.

BHDDH is encouraging these “self-directed” providers, as well as the established agencies, to apply for the one-time supported employment bonuses.  

The next opportunity for consumers and families to speak to state officials about the consent decree and developmental disability services in general is Wednesday, Nov.9 from 4 to 6 p.m at the Cherry Hill Manor Nursing and Rehab Center, 2 Cherry Hill Rd., Johnston.  

Judge McConnell has scheduled his next review of the consent decree for January 27 in U.S. District Court, Providence.

(The original version of this article inaccurately stated that recent raises to direct care workers did not include an increase for any aspect of employer-related costs.)  

RI Senate Leaders Launch Drive to Raise DD Workers' Pay to $15 in Next Five Years

By Gina Macris

DiPalma outlines Plan for $15 hourly wage in five years

Rhode Island Senate leaders have announced a five-year drive to lift wages of caregivers for adults with developmental disabilities to $15 an hour, with the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee saying Oct. 28 that the existing labor force is “so tenuous it is on the verge of collapse.” 

At a press conference in Warwick, Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, the architect of the plan, said it would start with an additional $6.8 million in Medicaid funding – half of it state revenue- in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017. 

The plan also calls for legislation that would commit the state to additional wage increases in each of the following four fiscal years, although the total cost has yet to be determined, DiPalma said. 

The General Assembly added $5 million in Medicaid funding to the current budget late in the 2016 legislative session, under pressure from Governor Gina Raimondo and from a federal court order reinforcing a consent decree mandating integration of individuals with developmental disabilities. 

The U.S. Department of Justice and an independent court monitor had expressed concern that low salaries prevented service agencies from attracting workers with the necessary skills to implement the consent decree. 

The $5 million added to the current budget – including $2.5 million in state funds - raises the average worker’s hourly wage by 36 cents, from $10.82 to $11.18, according to DiPalma. The $6.8 million in the next budget would add another 76 cents, for a new average hourly rate of $11.94, he said. 

Similar yearly hikes would be needed during the following four years to reach $15 an hour, DiPalma said, although the increments do not have to be evenly divided as long as the state reaches the goal by July 1, 2021, the start of the 2022 fiscal year. 

He plans to introduce legislation in the next session of the General Assembly calling for raises over multiple years. 

The effort has the support of the Senate President, Teresa Paiva Weed, and the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Daniel DaPonte. DiPalma is first vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

 Late Friday, David Ortiz, press secretary to Governor Raimondo, said that while the current budget gave workers their first raise in several years, “we must do more to stay competitive with neighboring states. “ 

“The Governor looks forward to partnering with Senator DiPalma and Senate President Paiva Weed to continue to invest in better outcomes for families and help ensure all of our workers can make it in Rhode Island,” Ortiz said. 

Massachusetts has agreed to pay personal care attendants a minimum of $15 an hour by 2018.  Enacted in 2015, it was the first such state-wide agreement in the nation. 

New York recently adopted legislation spelling out a multi-year plan to phase in a $15 minimum wage for all workers, with different schedules for various regions of the state. 

In a statement in Warwick Friday, DaPonte said that DiPalma’s plan “addresses an important part of the wage inequity problem, and helps improve outcomes for the individuals they serve. 

“At the same time, we need to continue to review the methodology for compensating all those direct care workers who serve our children, homebound elderly, and individuals with disabilities through other types of provider agencies,” he said. 

During the press conference at West Bay Residential Services on Knight Street, DaPonte talked about a constituent who approached him at his son’s soccer game and complained that his recently-widowed, elderly mother was not receiving the 20 hours of home care to which she was entitled. 

The constituent wanted DaPonte to introduce legislation to require home health aides to show up on the job. 

But DaPonte said he told the man that the workers were so poorly paid the agencies “can’t find people to show up.” 

“Now we’re at the point where the system is so tenuous it’s on the verge of collapse,” he told an audience of about 50 that filled a conference room at the headquarters of the agency, which specializes in support for individuals with significant physical limitations.  

Data shows Pay Inequities, Particularly for Women

DiPalma’s plan emerged from a four-month long study that showed stark inequities in the pay of direct care workers since the General Assembly cut a total of $26 million from the developmental disability budget in the fiscal year that began July 1, 2011. 

With that sweeping action, workers saw double-digit pay cuts, to an average of $10.65 an hour, according to DiPalma’s data. At the time, the minimum wage was $3.25 lower, or $7.40 an hour. 

Since then, however, the state’s minimum wage has increased 30 percent, to $9.60 an hour, while the average pay of direct care workers has remained stagnant. 

In the fiscal year which ended June 30, Rhode Island’s direct care workers made an hourly average of $10.82 an hour, while those doing comparable work in Massachusetts were paid $13.02,  and those in Connecticut made $12.19, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. 

The figures pertain to employees of private agencies providing direct care. In Rhode Island, a parallel, state-run system pays its entry-level workers $17.15 an hour, for an annual salary of $35,668. These workers also get thestate employee benefits package, according to DiPalma’s statistics.  

With longevity, the average direct care worker in the state system makes $42,278 a year, he said. 

DiPalma also presented the results of a 2015 survey of direct care workers conducted in 2015 by the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, an association made up of most of some three dozen private agencies in Rhode Island that serve about 4000 adults with developmental disabilities. 

With 1,439 responses, the survey found that:

•  More than half the workers were female heads of households
• · Many received food stamps and other government assistance geared toward low-income workers
• ·87 percent worked fulltime
• ·41 percent worked more than one job to make ends meet
• · 62 percent said they want to leave the developmental disabilities field because of the low pay 

The turnover among employees of private agencies is 33 percent a year, three times the turnover rate of 11 percent in the parallel state-run system, according to DiPalma’s study. 

Higher wages would mean greater stability and improved performance in the workforce, DiPalma said. 

Picking up where DiPalma left off, the director of the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College said research shows those two factors correlate with a better quality of life for the recipients of support services. 

Anthony Antosh said a better quality of life is measured by improved health and safety, more interpersonal relationships and greater self-determination among individuals with developmental disabilities. 

Jim Petrone works his communication board

Jim Petrone, who receives support from West Bay Residential Services, used a communication board to tell the audience that he could not have made it through a health crisis in 2015 without the support of his staff and family. 

“Now I have a second chance at life,” he said. 

Diane Scott, who has worked at West Bay Residential Services for 26 years, reminded the audience that those who provide direct care come to learn the most intimate details about a person’s life. 

“Imagine,” she said, “if staff showered you or bathed you.” 

“No sooner do you decide to trust these staff than they continue to leave. Regulars work extra hours to compensate for yet another staff vacancy,” Scott said. 

Antosh said direct care workers should be treated not as short-term custodial staff but as professionals, who are on a career ladder, and who provide comprehensive support to people with very complex needs.  

THREE-STATE COMPARISON OF MINIMUM WAGE AND HOURLY RATE FOR ATTENDANTS

CHART COURTESY OF RI SENATE 

Friends of the Disabled to Hold Forum in Newport on DD Services in Rhode Island

By Gina Macris

Friends of the Disabled, organized by Newport County families who have members with intellectual or developmental disabilities, will host a forum on the future of Rhode Island’s disability service system Wednesday, Oct. 5, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Newport campus of the Community College of RI. 

Candidates for the General Assembly have been invited to attend and address several questions about adult services that are provided by the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), according to Chris Semonelli of Middletown, co-director of the group.  

Most of the issues of concern to the parents are related to a history of declining funding.  The General Assembly, under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. District Court, and Governor Gina Raimondo, added about $11 million to developmental disabilities for the current fiscal year to comply with a federal consent decree requiring community-based employment and day services. 

Wednesday's program will cover current and future options for both daytime and residential services. 

The consent decree does not apply to residential services, although parents have expressed concern about the future availability of group home placements, which have been hard to come by in recent years. 

Since January, BHDDH has been emphasizing shared living arrangements, in which adults with developmental disabilities live in private homes. BHDDH should provide better supports to families providing shared living, according to Jane Gallivan, who until Sept. 30 served as Interim Director of Developmental Disabilities. 

Gallivan's Short Stint in RI Brings Plenty of Change, Starting with Plans for Better DD Assessment

Jane Gallivan   Photo by Anne Peters

By Gina Macris

In just the few months she has served as interim director of Rhode Island’s Division of Developmental Disabilities, Jane Gallivan has been instrumental in changing the state’s approach to providing services for individuals with intellectual challenges.

On the most concrete level, she has set plans in motion to adopt an improved version of a controversial assessment – the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) – to more accurately determine the needs of clients.

With help from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Gallivan also has shifted strategies for presenting the division’s budget so that the state Budget Office and the General Assembly better understand what it means to support individuals with developmental disabilities.

The initiatives Gallivan has begun, and the tone she has set, are expected to continue after her role changes Friday, Sept. 30, to that of long-distance consultant.

Gallivan, 68, is taking her 101 year-old mother to Florida for the winter, a commitment she made before Rhode Island officials approached her for short-term help in leading the developmental disabilities division.

She will continue to monitor and guide reforms and will serve on the committee that will screen applicants for the division’s permanent chief.

A former state-level director in Maine and Delaware, Gallivan already has been spreading the word about the director’s job through her nationwide contacts in the field of developmental disabilities.

As she prepared to end her full-time role in Rhode Island, Gallivan shared her perspective on the future of developmental disability services in Rhode Island.

Major Changes Coming to Every State

Gallivan says all state developmental disability service systems are in the midst of a sea change because of sweeping new Medicaid regulations.

The rules say that all services for the elderly and individuals with all types of disabilities must be provided in the least restrictive setting that is therapeutically appropriate, which is presumed to be the community.

After March, 2019, Gallivan said, Medicaid will no longer pay for sheltered workshops or segregated day programs after March, 2019.  Sheltered workshops don’t fit the Medicaid’s definition of “community,” she said.

Federal Medicaid dollars pay for half the cost Rhode Island’s developmental disability services.

The federal consent decree requiring Rhode Island to shift to community-based jobs and activities may put the state ahead of the curve, she said.

Both the consent decree in Rhode Island and the changed Medicaid regulations nationwide get their authority from the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is in effect a desegregation order for individuals protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

Individuals and families who struggle to find appropriate services may not yet see any change in their lives.

Gallivan says she worries about a caseload ratio that is “way too high” - one social worker to every 205 clients.

Social workers are “really concerned about helping people out,” she said, “but like any other service system, they are often, because of the ratios, dealing more with people in crisis”  or those just entering the system, rather than “supporting the people who are not the squeaky wheel.”

“No one wants to expand state government,” but state government must still “figure out how we’re going to put more resources into case management,” Gallivan said.

A New Way to Assess Service Needs

Since taking the interim director’s job in July, Gallivan has been “looking under the hood,” as she put it, to understand the barriers that need to be removed to allow “people to really get out and enjoy activities in the community, to get better connected, to explore new job options and so forth.”

She’s been searching for hindrances in state regulations, the way programs are funded, and the way clients have been assigned individual funding based on “tiers,” or levels of need.

The Supports Intensity Scale, (SIS) is a lengthy questionnaire used since 2011 to determine the individual level of funding according to “tiers” labeled A through E, with E being the costliest.

In the last few years, the SIS been the single most emotional flashpoint for families, many of whom have complained bitterly not only about results that yield insufficient funding, but that interviewers argued with them or recorded answers different than the ones they gave.

In the next several months, Gallivan said, the state will move to what she hopes will be a more accurate version of the assessment, with additional questions focusing on medical and behavioral needs.

SIS Interviewers will be retrained in the new version by representatives of the organization which developed the SIS, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD).

Gallivan said training also will be offered to family members and representatives of service provider agencies, who attend the interviews and help answer questions.

The state will monitor the new approach to determine whether it leads to a reduction of a high number of exceptions now granted to the assessment results. 

The exceptions, in which a client may have more funding than warranted by the official level of support, have raised numerous questions in the General Assembly about how the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities, and Hospitals (BHDDH) manages its budget. 

Gallivan offered some background on the SIS, which is used in Rhode Island as a basic building block of the developmental disability budget.

On its face, the SIS is a better assessment than some others in use across the country because it frames questions in terms of an individual’s strengths and the supports he or she may need to achieve a particular goal, rather than focusing on deficits, Gallivan said.

But it has its limitations, she readily acknowledged. It is recognized nationwide that the SIS does not address extensive medical needs or behavioral issues, Gallivan said.

“You also have to be sensitive to people who are very independent, but they may get themselves into trouble with the law,” or in some other way, because of their disabilities, she said.  For example, some individuals may appear independent, but if they don’t have the proper support and guidance, they may end up at a homeless shelter, or picked up by police for shoplifting.

The SIS was developed as a tool for planning individualized programs of support, not as a funding mechanism, although many states use it for budgeting, Gallivan said..

As a result of the gaps inherent in the original assessment, the state of Oregon developed a number of questions on behavioral and medical support needs that were tried out by other states and ultimately incorporated into a new version of the questionnaire called the SIS-A, Gallivan said.

“Everyone came to the conclusion that these supplemental questions really did add a more robust, accurate assessment,” she said.

AAIDD released the SIS-A in 2015, according to the organization’s website.

Gallivan said arrangements are being made for AAIDD representatives to come to Rhode Island for training in the SIS-A. At the same time, the consultants who developed the formula for turning SIS scores into individual funding levels have been asked to revise that algorithm to correspond to the SIS-A, she said.

Disability Services: a Lifetime Commitment

Meanwhile, Gallivan has tried to set a different tone for presenting the needs of individuals with developmental disabilities to the state Budget Office. 

“I’m not saying that people don’t know” what the Division of Developmental Disabilities does, “but a lot of people really don’t know,” she said with a chuckle.

“So I think it’s really important to paint a picture” of the service system and the people in the middle of it, Gallivan said.

Budget officials should know who the division serves, whether they live with their families or elsewhere, the kinds of services they receive, why the services are important to them and their families, the actual costs of providing those services, and the expected outcomes, Gallivan said.

That’s a different approach than seeing the system as a list of line items, she said.

It’s important for the fiscal arm of state government to understand that “we are the long-term care system,” Gallivan said.

“People think of the elderly as being the long-term care system, but they’re only in there for a few years,” she said.

“We’re talking birth to 100” in developmental disabilities, she said.

Legislators must understand that they can’t take money from individuals with developmental disabilities and give it to someone else, Gallivan said.

“In this system, everyone who comes through the door will have a life-long need for some kind of support because of the nature of their disability,” she said.

It’s not analogous to the mental health system, where funds may be shifted because one person is in recovery and another is not, Gallivan said.

A Focus on Families

In any presentation she makes, Gallivan said, she tries to emphasize the need to support families who have a member with developmental disabilities living at home with them.

Many families want their loved one at home, she said. "Ffrom a bureaucratic perspective, it’s (generally) the safest place they’ll be,” she said, “and the cost of services in the family home will be less than they will be anywhere else.”

“So how can we invest in families and recognize them as caregivers? We talk about people as caregivers of those with Alzheimer's, but we have people who are caregivers of people with developmental disabilities who face a lot of challenges” and have their own need for support, Gallivan said.

She suggested families should have access to more respite care and should be able to get financial support for modifications like wheelchair ramps.

Gallivan also indicated technology might help families keep tabs on their loved ones, although options like bedroom cameras might not be universally welcome in some homes.

The full range of supports for families “need to become a very strong focus,” Gallivan said, “and the type of planning we need to do with families is very different.”

“You need to talk about the whole family and what the family needs are,” she said.  

Families and individuals who advocate for themselves must be part of the conversation, Gallivan said.

Judge, DOJ Praise RI's Compliance Efforts In DD Case; Contempt Hearing Avoided, For Now

By Gina Macris

The state of Rhode Island has done more in the last six months to comply with a federal consent decree aimed at ending the isolation of adults with developmental disabilities than the previous state administration did in the first two years of the agreement. 

That assessment came from the U.S. Department of Justice Sept. 16 in a conference on the status of the 2014 agreement before U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell, Jr.   

Because of those efforts, McConnell deferred, for now, a request by DOJ lawyer Nicole Kovite Zeitler that he hold contempt proceedings in early October over the state’s failure to hit specific targets in the order McConnell issued last spring to force compliance with the consent decree.

By signing the consent decree in 2014, the state promised, over a ten-year period, to establish a system of community-based, integrated work and leisure activities for individuals with developmental disabilities that would replace sheltered workshops and segregated day programs. The transition is mandated by the Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.  

While acknowledging the state’s intensive efforts, led by Jennifer Wood, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services, Zeitler cited two non-compliance issues: the scarcity of young adults with developmental disabilities holding jobs, and the state’s failure to distribute increased reimbursement rates to private service providers by Aug. 1 as the judge had required.  

Wood said rate increases would be implemented Oct. 1. That is the date the computer system will be adjusted to reflect a 36-cent hourly increase, from $11.55 to $11.91, in the average reimbursement rate paid to private service providers.  

Approximately 4000 workers at private agencies will get raises, retroactive to July 1, after their employers start receiving the higher reimbursements. 

Mary Madden, the state’s consent decree coordinator, elaborated on the lack of job placements for young adults. 

Of a total of 151 individuals with intellectual disabilities who left school in the 2013-2014 or 2014-2015 academic years, 99 are receiving adult services, including 79 who are receiving employment-related services and 29 who are actually employed, Madden said. 

She did not have data for the 2015-2016 academic year. 

The employment number is “not where anyone wants it to be,” Madden said.   

Of the 151 identified, 52 individuals are not enrolled for any services. 

Later, Zeitler said the notion that 52 young adults have not been connected with adult services is a serious concern. 

Charles Moseley, the independent monitor in the case, said he wanted to echo both Zeitler’s concerns and her praise of the state’s efforts so far. 

He said he “wrestled with the idea of a show-cause hearing,” a proceeding that might lead to a contempt order, but decided against recommending it, because he believes the state can work with him to plan and provide employment services. 

While McConnell noted that a missed deadline in a judicial order is a serious issue, he deferred to Moseley’s confidence that he can work things out with the state. 

“I tend to be a ‘half-full’ kinda guy,” McConnell said, explaining his decision. 

“Some may call me Pollyanna-ish,” he said, but the compliance effort put forth by the state in the last six months “deserves a compliment and a thanks.”  

McConnell said state government doesn’t move quickly, even with court sanctions hanging over its head, as they were after McConnell issued a 22-point compliance order May 18. 

The fact that the Governor and the General Assembly acted late in the legislative season to add $11 million to the developmental disabilities budget should be acknowledged, McConnell said. He also thanked Health and Human Services Secretary Elizabeth Roberts, Deputy Secretary Wood, and her administrative team. About half a dozen of them attended the hearing.  

“We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the Department of Justice,” McConnell continued, praising its “tenacity and advocacy in taking on an incredibly complex task for those who wouldn’t otherwise have a voice.” 

But McConnell said he wasn’t about to unfurl a “Mission Accomplished banner” just yet.  

A report that the monitor filed with the court on the eve of the hearing outlines a plan to put the state on short-term deadlines for developing employment strategies for young adults and making sure all those eligible for services are identified. The employment-related strategies are due Oct. 1. 

 Moseley gave the state until Nov. 15 to identify all young adults who have left school in the last three academic years who are eligible for developmental disability services, but he wants to hear how it will approach that problem by Sept. 30. 

The effort will require cooperation by the state Department of Education, the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, and the state Office of Rehabilitation Services. 

Moseley has expressed concern that the state is missing those who do not have an intellectual disability but are eligible because of a developmental delay.   Depending on the individual, a young adult on the autism spectrum may fall into the latter category. 

With the average cost of services at about $59,000 a year per person, Moseley’s directive for better identification of eligible young adults has the potential to add significantly to the developmental disabilities budget. 

For example, it would cost an estimated $3 million a year to serve the 52 young adults who have been identified but who are not enrolled in developmental disability services. 

Moseley, meanwhile, reflected on concerns expressed by the DOJ about the need for quality career development planning, a newly-implemented exercise that is intended to drive thoughtful, individualized job searches. 

“Person-centered planning, person-centered thinking, is a challenge that is facing all states. It needs to be done on an ongoing basis,” he said. 

Earlier in the hearing, Deputy Secretary Wood said the new chief employment specialist, Tracey Cunningham, had personally trained more than 200 people in how to write career development plans. 

But Moseley said it’s not a matter of one training. “You have to learn it and live it,” he said. 

Rhode Island Considers Reorganizing BHDDH; Finding "Strong" DD Director Is Top Priority

By Gina Macris

The Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals  may undergo restructuring, if it is determined that a different organization of services would better serve the  needs of it clients, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) confirmed on Friday, Sept. 9  

Asked whether a departmental reorganization is on the table, Sophie O’Connell replied in an email: “No decisions have been made, but we are considering the option to make sure that we are delivering the best quality care and services to some of the most vulnerable people in our state.” 

Before she left in June, former BHDDH Director Maria Montanaro recommended that BHDDH be split up. The Eleanor Slater Hospital should be run by a dedicated board of directors, she said, while mental health and developmental disability services each should have a commissioner under the direct supervision of EOHHS. 

Such sweeping changes would require gubernatorial and legislative approval. On an ad-hoc basis, however, EOHHS has established direct oversight of the Division of Disabilities in recent months, primarily in response to the demands of a federal consent decree. 

O’Connell said there is no timeline for recruiting a permanent BHDDH director while EOHHS and BHDDH work on a plan that would take into account “how we can most effectively blend fragmented program, policy and funding streams to ensure Rhode Islanders are receiving the best possible care and services.”  Rebecca Boss serves as interim director of BHDDH. 

“Secretary (Elizabeth) Roberts as well as the BHDDH and EOHHS management teams are personally committed to ensuring continued progress on the important reforms taking place at BHDDH. This includes the ongoing work to improve services for individuals living with developmental disabilities and to recruit talented DD leadership into the agency,” O’Connell said. 

“Our most pressing concern at the present moment is recruiting a strong leader for the Division of Developmental Disabilities,” she said. 

The developmental disability director’s post is particularly critical as the state tries to comply with the federal consent decree by shifting away from sheltered workshops and segregated day programs toward integrated employment and community-based non-work activities. 

The division has been without a permanent director since July 22 when Charles Williams retired.

Jane Gallivan, who was coaxed out of retirement to serve as interim director of developmental disabilities, will step down at the end of the month because of family responsibilities, according to O’Connell. 

Although Gallivan will remain a consultant – primarily a long-distance one – the state has not announced who will administer developmental disability services in the short term or when a new director might be named. 

 As of Friday, September 9, the post had not been advertised on the state’s employment website. Nor has a search committee been seated.  

In response to repeated inquiries, over the past week, O’Connell said that Gallivan would providemore information Sept. 14 about the search for a director for the division. 

Gallivan, former developmental disabilities director in Maine and Delaware, plans to spend the winter in Florida with her 101-year-old mother, who has been staying on Cape Cod for the summer. 

General Assembly Approves $15.4 Million Increase For DD; Worker Raises Are Assured

By Gina Macris 

Rhode Island’s developmental disability budget for the next fiscal year includes assurances that aa total of $9.1 million in Medicaid money will be spent to raise pay for direct support workers and to begin transforming the state’s system of services for those with intellectual challenges.

Shortly after 1:30 am on Saturday, June 18, The Senate approved total developmental disability funding of $246.2 million beginning July 1 in concurrence with the House vote taken Wednesday. That total, almost all of it state and federal Medicaid funds, is nearly $15.4 million more than the General Assembly approved last year at this time for the current budget, which closes on June 30.

New budget language ensures that $4.5 million in state revenue earmarked for worker raises and performance-based contracts can’t be used for anything else in the overall appropriation of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The language is significant. In the recent past, as much $9 million has been budgeted in a single year to raise the wages of some 4,000 workers who provide direct support services, but the money has gone instead to help close deficits in the BHDDH budget.

The workers make an average of about $11.50 an hour, often less than the clients they support in jobs in fast food restaurants. Many of the direct support staff receive public assistance,  according to testimony presented to the House and Senate finance committees during the current legislative session.

The big difference between this year and past legislative sessions has been a federal court case aimed at enforcing a 2014 consent decree in which Rhode Island agreed to transform sheltered workshops and segregated day programs into a community-based system of services over a 10-year period. The decree settled a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found the sheltered workshops violated the integration mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1999 so-called Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which clarified that requirement.

In late January of this year, Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of U.S. District Court became actively involved in monitoring the state’s compliance with the consent decree. In May, he issued an order putting the state at risk for contempt if it does not meet any one of nearly two dozen specific goals.

One of the requirements in the order is that the state adopt increased funding sought by Governor Gina Raimondo for developmental disabilities in the next fiscal year “in order to fund compliance with the Consent Decree.” The order does not mention a specific dollar amount.

Several other requirements in the order collectively set an August 1 deadline for implementing appropriate raises for direct support staff, regular supervision of workers, and a pilot group of performance-based contracts for supported employment services.

It’s not yet clear how much money the raises will add to the workers’ pay, or what the incentives will be in the performance-based contracts.

Initially, Raimondo’s budget proposal included a little more than $5 million for raises of 45 cents an hour, but that sum was not considered enough to provide performance initiatives to the private agencies that provide most of the developmental disability services in Rhode Island. .

After improved state revenue projections in May, Raimondo added another $4 million to wages and other increases to providers. .  

Raimondo sought protective language to segregate state revenue budgeted for pay increases for developmental disability workers, but that wording was eliminated in the budget passed by the House Finance Committee.

Sometime before the June 15 vote on the House floor, however, new and more detailed language was inserted, a House spokesman confirmed Friday night. 

The new language says that $4.5 million of general revenue “shall be expended on private provider direct support staff raises and associated payroll costs to include targeted increases associated with performance-based contracting and system transformation incentives” authorized by BHDDH.

Because funding for developmental disability services is part of the state’s Medicaid program, the $4.5 million in state revenue set aside for raises would be matched by federal funds, for a total of slightly more than $9 million..

Raises also must be approved by the Office of Management and Budget and the Executive Office of Human Services, according to the budget language. Changes in reimbursement methods must be approved by the Governor’s office and OMB.

RI House Passes DD Budget Unchanged From Finance Committee Recommendation

By Gina Macris

(Correction: While the House did not change the appropriation recommended by the House Finance Committee, language was inserted prior to the floor debate that makes sure $5 million in state revenue cannot be used for anything else other than wage increases for direct support workers and performance incentives for the private agencies that employ them.) 

Rhode Island's developmental disability budget passed the House unchanged from the last week's finance committee recommendation in a floor vote shortly before midnight June 15. The House sent the entire $8.9 billion state budget to the Senate.

In developmental disability spending, the bottom line would be $246.2 million, part of $1.4 billion in human services expenses for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

 In June, 2015, the General Assembly authorized $230.9 million in developmental disability spending for the current fiscal year, which ends in two weeks.  As part of its action late Wednesday night, the House added nearly $9.6 million to that figure as a supplemental appropriation. 

The bottom line difference between the start of Fiscal Year 2016 and Fiscal Year 2017, which takes effect July 1, is nearly $15.4 million.

The new budget would include $9.1 million to raise the pay of staff of private providers who work directly with adults having developmental disabilities and to change the way the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) reimburses service providers.

These steps are necessary to satisfy some of the requirements of a federal court order issued in May to enforce a 2014 consent decree requiring a shift from sheltered workshops and segregated day programs to supported employment and community-based activities that comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Pay increases would be coupled with yet-to-be negotiated performance-based contracts between the state and private agencies that help their clients get regular jobs and enjoy integrated leisure activities. 
 
Governor Gina Raimondo had proposed language that would specifically allocate $2.5 million in state funds for the raises. Each of those dollars would be matched by roughly an equal amount of federal Medicaid funding, for a total of about $5.1 million.

The House Finance Committee, however, removed the protective language around the $2.5 million in state funding, meaning that if BHDDH runs a deficit – as it has for the last eight years – the money set aside for raises could be used to help close the gap. (See correction at top of story.) 

Raimondo originally sought to pay for requirements of the consent decree in both the current fiscal year and the new fiscal year by using savings that would result from encouraging group home residents to move to less expensive shared living arrangements in private homes, but that initiative fell far short of its goal.

Her initial budget figured on saving $3.1 million in the current budget and $16.6 million in the next budget, by making as many as 500 new shared living arrangements.

However, the slow pace of these transfers led the governor to ask the General Assembly to put back all $3.1 million in group home costs in the existing fiscal year, and to reduce savings by $10.2 million in group home costs in the budget beginning July 1. The House agreed.  As a result, BHDDH is expected to save $6.4 million in group home costs in Fiscal Year 2017.

The House refused Raimondo’s request to add $5.8 million to the next budget for a caseload increase, with the finance committee recommendation saying the caseload has been stable at about 4,000 persons.

The House budget language adds extensive reporting requirements intended to keep the General Assembly abreast of BHDDH compliance with the federal consent decree, Rep. Eileen Naughton, D-Warwick, said on the House floor.

BHDDH is already required to provide key fiscal officials in the General Assembly and the governor’s office monthly reports on the developmental disability caseload and expenditures.

The new language encompasses not only information required by the U.S. District Court but other factors affecting the budget. It says:

“The department (BHDDH) shall also provide monthly the number of individuals in a shared living arrangement and how many may have returned to a 24-hour residential placement in that month. The department shall also report monthly any and all information for the consent decree that has been submitted to the federal court as well as the number of unduplicated individuals employed, the place of employment and the number of hours working. The department shall also provide the amount of funding allocated to individuals above the assigned resource levels, the number of individuals and the assigned resource level and the reasons for the approved additional resources.  The department shall also provide the amount of patient liability to be collected and the amount collected as well as the number of individuals who have a financial obligation.”

(This article has been updated.)

• UPDATE: The Rhode Island House passed the developmental disabilities budget unchanged June 15 and sent it to the Senate. Details to come. 

DD Service Provider Takes 'Wait and See' Attitude on Budget, Citing History of Disappointment

By Gina Macris

Until Rhode Island’s appropriation for developmental disabilities is released to the agency that administers it, the amount of money that is finally approved by the General Assembly will be  “just a number,” according to a member of the Employment First Task Force who follows legislative affairs.

photo by anne peters 

Tom Kane, (left), CEO of AccessPoint RI, a provider of developmental disability services, said that in the past several years, there have been three unsuccessful attempts to raise the pay of support staff for adults with developmental disabilities.

All the extra money, between $4 million and $9 million in a single fiscal year, has gone instead to fill a structural deficit in the budget of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), Kane said.

On Wednesday, June 15, the House is expected to vote on an appropriation that would add $9.1 million for raises for about 4000 workers and create a new reimbursement method for some two dozen agencies providing most of the direct services for individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities.(

The budget proposal voted out of the House Finance Committee, however, does not include Governor Gina Raimondo’s request for $5.8 million for a caseload increase.

Kane indicated that amount of money could also represent the structural deficit in the next fiscal year's developmental disability budget. BHDDH officials say the deficit averages $4.6 a year.

Based on past experience, the money set aside for raises could once again be reserved to fill the deficit, Kane told the group.

The Employment First Task Force was created by a 2014 federal consent decree to serve as a bridge between the community and state governmental agencies that administer developmental disability services. The decree resulted from a federal investigation that found Rhode Island’s sheltered workshops violated the the integration mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act., clarified in the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mary Madden, the state’s consent decree coordinator, said, “People at the General Assembly are not into the consent decree at all.”

They don’t understand why developmental disability services cost so much, she said,  because they don’t understand “what it is to provide support 24 hours a day.”

Whatever figure is adopted – the current proposal has a bottom line of about $246 million dollars – the U.S. Department of Justice and an independent court monitor will review it. If either of them has the opinion it is not enough for the state to comply with the consent decree, they could ask the judge in the case to hold a show-cause hearing as to why the state should not be held in contempt.  

More Money for Developmental Disability Services; Is it Enough to Satisfy the Court?

By Gina Macris

The Rhode Island House Finance Committee’s recommended budget for developmental disabilities could represent a glass half full or a glass half empty. 

Neither description is likely to satisfy the U.S. District Court, which recently issued an order saying, in effect, that the state must provide developmental disabilities programs a full glass.  

The House Finance Committee would give Governor Gina Raimondo most of what she asked for in the next fiscal year, including $5.1 million to raise the pay of direct care workers making poverty wages and another $4.1 million to restructure the way private service providers are reimbursed. 

But the recommended budget also is built on two iffy assumptions – that the developmental disability agency will be able to save $6.4 million in housing costs and that the caseload will remain the same, with about 4,000 people receiving services. Raimondo’s budget asked for a $5.8 million increase for 100 new cases. 

If either assumption misses the mark, there might not be enough money in the budget to shore up the private service providers, putting at risk at least some of a total of $9.1 million set aside for the raises the service providers want and performance-based contracts the state wants in order to restructure the way it reimburses the private agencies and satisfy part of the U.S. District Court order. 

All of the Governor’s request – a total of  $16.9 million in added federal and state Medicaid revenue-  is needed to correct chronic underfunding in the budget of the Department of Behavioral Health, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), the department director, Maria Montanaro, told the House Finance Committee in a recent hearing.

 For the last eight fiscal years, including the current one, the bills BHDDH gets from service providers have exceeded budgeted amounts, Montanaro said. 

Raimondo sought to protect wage increases by specifying in her original proposal that $2.5 million of general revenue “shall be expended on private provider Direct Support Staff raises” in the next fiscal year. That sum would be matched by federal Medicaid dollars for a total of $5.1 million that would pay for 45-cent hourly wage increases.

 The protective language around the $2.5 million in state revenue has disappeared from the House Finance Committee’s recommendation. 

With the protective language gone, there could be a replay of the current budget, in which $4 million was originally set aside to boost workers’ pay but never made it into their pockets, going instead to help narrow a hole in the budget. 

Raimondo herself is counting on the first assumption, that BHDDH will save $6.4 million in the next fiscal year by convincing group home residents that they would be happier living with able-bodied housemates in private homes in the community. These are called shared living arrangements. Simply relocating people would run counter to federal law.

The $6.4 million in savings represents a fraction of Raimondo’s original estimate. In February, when she first released her budget for the 2017 fiscal year, she proposed saving $16.6 million by moving 400 group home residents to shared living in 12 months’ time. The House Finance Committee agreed with her subsequent request to restore $10.2 million of that total. 

The prospects of achieving even $6.4 million in savings are not strong if the efforts of the past six months are any indication.  What BHDDH director  Montanaro describes as a “full court press” to increase the number of shared living arrangements in the second half of the current fiscal year has yielded results that are about the same as the first half. There were 11 new shared living arrangements from July to December of 2015 and 10 new placements since January.

The governor’s budget proposal called for $3.5 million in group home savings during the current fiscal year with 100 new shared living arrangements,  but the actual savings will be more like $200,000, Montanaro told the Senate Finance Committee at the end of April.  

The House Finance Committee’s recommended budget acknowledges this development by adding $3.5 million back into to the department’s supplemental appropriation for the current fiscal period, which ends June 30. 

While approving major elements of the governor’s developmental disabilities budget proposal, the House Finance Committee rejected a $5.8-million request to cover an estimated caseload increase of 100 in the coming fiscal year, saying that the developmental disability caseload has been stable at about 4,000. 

Yet there is a backlog of about 240 individuals who have applied for an eligibility determination, according to a BHDDH spokeswoman. Two thirds of them are under the age of 21, according to another BHDDH official. That would mean that roughly 80 are over 21.   

And the numbers of young adults with developmental disabilities who are turning 21 and leaving school - 74 in the current academic year alone – suggest that the caseload should be growing. 

Persons with developmental disabilities between the ages of 14 and 21, who are at risk of segregation as adults, are one of the main concerns of the U.S. Department of Justice in enforcing a 2014 consent decree requiring community-based adult services, with an emphasis on supported employment. 

The consent decree, in effect until Jan. 1, 2024, resulted from a DOJ investigation that found the state’s sheltered workshops and segregated day centers for adults with disabilities violated the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which was clarified in the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.. 

In a hearing in April in U.S. District Court, the DOJ presented evidence that BHDDH does not determine eligibility until a few months before an applicant turns 21. 

State law says that persons with developmental or intellectual disabilities are eligible for services when they turn 18. 

Newly eligible young adults and their families often have trouble finding appropriate services, according to the evidence presented in court.  

Many of the two dozen private service providers in the state are not accepting new clients because they say they are operating at a deficit.  Montanaro has confirmed that assertion, telling the House Finance Committee recently that the private agencies have opened their books to BHDDH. 

With the federal court case continuing under terms of a judge’s order, there is likely to be pressure on the state to make sure that all applicants for adult services get timely consideration and an appropriate array of supports, a factor that could push up the caseload numbers. 

In its budget recommendation, the House Finance Committee said it would reconsider its refusal of a caseload increase if the numbers do go up. 

It is possible that decision was at least partly influenced by frustration in the House leadership with a history of poor record-keeping at BHDDH, something that also has worked against the department in the U.S. District Court case. 

The House Finance budget added extensive language requiring BHDDH to report monthly on a variety of statistics, including everything submitted to the court as part of the consent decree requirements. 

After the court experienced delays in getting an accurate count of individuals protected by the consent decree, Judge John J. McConnell issued an order May 18 that requires the state “to create a live database that will allow for efficient and effective tracking of each member of each target population outlined in the Consent Decree and all related and required services and outcomes.” The order then describes all the reporting requirements in extensive detail. 

In all, the order contains 22 requirements, most of them with deadlines in July and August. In the event of a violation of any part of the order, the DOJ or an independent court monitor in the case could ask McConnell for a show-cause hearing as to why the state should not be held in contempt. Fines start at $1,000 a day and max out at a total of $1 million for the year.

The first requirement of the order is that “the State will appropriate the additional money contained in the Governor’s budget for fiscal year 2017 in order to fund compliance with the Consent Decree.” No dollar amount is cited.  

RI House Finance Chairman Asks Whether DD Services Really Need Money; Gets Emphatic Yes in Reply

Maureen Gaynor uses assistive technology to testify before the Rhode Island House Finance Committee May 26. She says people with disabilities want the same thing everyone else does; a job, a role in their communities, and purpose in their lives. To her left is Lisa Rafferty, executive director of Bridges, a disability service provider.

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island’s developmental disability agency needs more revenue in the next fiscal year because it will not come close to saving a target of $16.2 million in group home expenses, the agency’s director, Maria Montanaro, told the House Finance Committee in a hearing May 26.

Montanaro emphasized that after eight years of cost-cutting in the developmental disability budget, the state now needs to add revenue to ensure that Rhode Island residents who live with intellectual challenges get the Medicaid-funded services to which they are entitled by law.

The Committee chairman, Rep Marvin L. Abney, (D-Newport), wasn’t necessarily convinced by Montanaro’s testimony, asking rhetorically, “Is money really the problem?” 

ABNEY                                          Image by Capitol TV

“We’re going on and on and on and on,” Abney said. “I’ll leave you with this thought. It’s not a question, but we are concerned,  is money really the problem? When we’re talking about efficiencies to the system, is money always the answer to that? You don’t need to respond, but just think of that as a director,” he said.

Montanaro did not reply, but other witnesses did say a lack of money is a key factor in ongoing federal court oversight of the state’s compliance with a two-year-old consent degree in which Rhode Island agreed to bring its disabilities services in line with the Americans With Disabilities At (ADA).

The agreement, with the U.S. Department of Justice, requires the state to enable more persons with disabilities to work in regular jobs, rather than in “sheltered workshops.” The decree also requires the state to help persons with disabilities participate in other community-based activities.

In an order issued May 18, Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. laid out 22 short-term deadlines the state must meet. Missing even one of them could trigger a contempt of court hearing. If the state is found in contempt, the judge would require the state to pay a minimum of $1,000 a day for violations of the consent decree, or as much as $1 million a year.  

The first requirement in McConnell’s order is that “the State will appropriate the additional money contained in the Governor’s budget for fiscal 2017 in order to fund compliance with the Consent Decree.”

The subject of the House Finance Committee’s hearing was Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposed budget amendments for the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH),  for 2016-2017 fiscal year, which begins July 1.

In all, Raimondo has requested $18.7 million in added revenue for developmental disabilities, offset by an accounting shift of $1.8 million in home health aide services from BHDDH to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

Also on the table is a proposal for about $6.8 million in additional appropriations in the current fiscal year to address a current budget deficit in developmental disabilities. 

If the General Assembly approves the supplemental appropriation, the bottom line in BHDDH’s Division of Developmental Disabilities would increase from $230.9 million to $237.7 million before June 30. Raimondo’s request for an additional $16.9 million in the coming fiscal year would push the overall disabilities budget up to $254.6 million, with about half that amount coming from state coffers. 

In fiscal 2016-2017, Raimondo seeks to make up $10.2 million of the $16.2 million she originally envisioned saving in reduced group home costs.

The governor also wants an additional $9.2 million in funding to raise salaries for staff who work with adults with intellectual challenges, or $4.1 million more than she asked for in February. 

In addition:

• $180,000 would be set aside for an ombudsperson to protect the rights of persons with developmental disabilities

• ·4.4 million would be restored to the BHDDH budget to prevent the inadvertent loss of professional services like occupational and physical therapy for some persons with developmental disabilities.

All the money comes from Medicaid, with a roughly dollar-for-dollar match in federal and state spending.

Montanaro, the BHDDH director, said adequate funding of developmental disabilities in the next budget would prevent BHDDH from running a deficit every year.

The developmental disability caseload, 4,000 to 4200 annually, also should be included in calculations of the state’s semi-annual Revenue and Caseload Estimating Conference to prevent unexpected surprises in the budget, she said. 

Montanaro                                                               Image by Capitol TV

The twice-yearly conference is a forum for top fiscal advisors to the Governor, the House and the Senate to reach consensus on the state’s revenues and Medicaid caseload expenses for the coming budget year.  

Montanaro said the $9.1 million in raises for direct care workers are necessary to satisfy the consent decree.

Without being able to offer higher pay, the private agencies that provide most of the direct services won’t be able to re-direct their efforts toward supporting their clients in jobs as the consent decree requires, Montanaro explained.

Workers make an average of about $11.50 an hour, often less than the clients they support in jobs in fast food restaurants, according to testimony at the hearing.

BHDDH originally counted on achieving $16.2 million in savings in the next fiscal year by convincing hundreds of group home residents to move into less expensive shared living arrangements with individual families, Montanaro said.

However, that effort has encountered resistance by individuals and families who find safety and security in group home living, she said.

Since BHDDH began what Montanaro described as a “full court press” on shared living at the beginning of this year, 10 group home residents have moved into private homes with host families, according to BHDDH statistics.

There are now 288 adults with developmental disabilities in shared living – an option that has been available for a decade in Rhode Island – and about 1300 persons living in group homes in Rhode Island.

Tobon                                                           Image by Capitol TV 

When Montanaro originally testified in January about the plan to shift to shared living, it was in the context of closing a projected $6 million deficit in the current fiscal year.

Recalling that testimony, Rep. Carlos E. Tobon, (D-Pawtucket), a Finance Committee member, said he had been “really concerned” about the timetable.

“You had to sit over there and pretty much, not  convince us, but tell us that this is what you were going to do,” Tobon said. “What was your confidence in actually achieving that?”

“I think I was very clear with the committee that it was a very aggressive approach,” Montanaro replied.

“But the problem, Representative, that I want you to understand, is that we are mandated by (state) law to come up with a corrective action plan” to close a budget deficit, she said.

The choice was either to continue the eight-year pattern of cutting benefits or eligibility, while the federal court watched “the crumbling of that system,” Montanaro said, or to try to get savings by encouraging persons with disabilities to move into more integrated living arrangements.

Montanaro described it as a “Sophie’s Choice,” a dramatic allusion to a forced decision being forced to decide between two terrible options.

 “We knew we might have to come back and tell you our actual experience with that,” she said alluding to the fact that the short-term shared living effort has fallen far short of the goal.

 A gradual shift toward shared living is in keeping with a broad, long-range federal mandate to desegregate services for individuals with a variety of disabilities, but it does not address the Rhode Island consent decree, Montanaro said.

 
In the past several months, as the federal court watched BHDDH spending nearly all its efforts to try to save more money instead of working on the employment requirements of the consent decree, Montanaro said, the judge and the court monitor in the case became “very worried.”

The monitor, Charles Moseley, has said that timing is critical.

Unless the state meets certain benchmarks now, Moseley has said in reports to the court, it will not be able to fulfill the long-range requirements of the consent decree, which calls for a ten-year, system-wide shift from segregated to integrated day time supports for adults with developmental disabilities to comply with the ADA. The decree, signed April 8, 2014, expires Jan. 1, 2024. 

Montanaro said that concerns of the monitor and the judge over the state’s emphasis on cost-cutting instead of the consent decree requirements prompted a recent court order that spells out conditions under which Rhode Island could be fined as much as $1 million this year for contempt. 

In her testimony before the House Finance Committee, Montanaro drove home her point.

“The last thing I’ll say about it is that we really can’t afford to direct all of our departmental activity toward an effort that isn’t actually the effort that the consent decree is obligating us to pay the most close attention to, which is the employment issue,” Montanaro said.

“Judge McConnell and the court monitor want to see the state of Rhode Island make the necessary financial investments in transforming the system, and you can’t transform everything at once,” she said, alluding to Moseley’s concerns about timing.

Montanaro continued to explain, but that’s when Abney, the committee chairman, interrupted, asking his rhetorical question: “Is money really the problem?” 

Later in a hearing that lasted nearly two hours, Tom Kane, CEO of a private service agency, and Kevin Nerney, associate director of the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council, each told Abney that “it is about the money.”

Nerney said, “Whether I think it’s about money, or whether anyone else thinks it’s about money, there’s a federal court judge that thinks it’s about money, and the Department of Justice does, as well.”

Kane, CEO of AccessPoint RI, said “The reason the DOJ is here is a money problem,” he said. “We have jobs available for people (with disabilities) waiting to work,” he said, but providers of developmental disability services can’t hire the support staff “to make that happen,” he said.

Of 77 job applicants at AccessPoint RI during the month of April, 35 refused a job offer because of the low pay, Kane said. “They tell me they can make more sitting home collecting” unemployment benefits, he said.

Serpa                                                  Image by RI Capitol TV 

As he has testified at previous State House hearings on the developmental disabilities budget, Kane said private service providers operate at an average loss of about $5,000 a year for each person they employ. 

Rep. Patricia A. Serpa, (D-West Warwick, Coventry and Warwick), asked whether executives of developmental disability agencies have received raises while their workers have been paid low wages in recent years.

Kane said he gave all AccessPoint RI employees a 3 percent raise in January, the first time since 2006. At the start of the 2011-2012 fiscal year, after the General Assembly voted to cut $24 million from the developmental disabilities budget, everyone took a 7.5 percent pay cut, he said.

Donna Martin, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, CPNRI, said all the member agencies that cut pay that year started at the top.

A review of IRS reports from organizations exempt from taxes shows that executives of developmental disability agencies with budgets less than $5 million make 25 percent less than those of other non-profit agencies in Rhode Island, Martin said.

In developmental disability agencies with budgets greater than $5 million, the executives make 30 percent less than those of other non-profit organizations in the state, she said.

Kane, meanwhile, asked the committee to think of the governor’s budget proposal as a “jobs request.”

KanE                                                    ImAge by Capitol TV 

Kane submitted a copy of research done by the University of Massachusetts Amherst which indicates that every million dollars invested in disability services in Rhode Island creates a total of 25 jobs. Based on that research, Kane said later, the $9 million Raimondo has requested to raise pay for direct care workers would translate into a total of 225 jobs.

Kane also said the state should “braid” funding from BHDDH with the Office of Rehabilitation Services of the state Department of Human Services (ORS) to fund “employment teams” that would be more effective than the two agencies working separately to try to do the same thing.

That idea came out of recent discussions between state officials and private agencies about a system-wide redesign of services, Kane said.

Bob Cooper, executive secretary of the Governor’s Commission on Disabilities, said he would add the state Department of Labor and Training (DLT) as another “braid” in Kane’s analogy.

Federal rehabilitation dollars channeled through DLT reimburse the state 78 cents for every dollar the state spends; a better deal than the 50-50 match from the Medicaid program, he said.

The federally-funded Disability Employment Initiative, a workforce development demonstration grant run by DLT, “was making a difference” before the grant ended and the program shut down March 30, Cooper said.

If the state is to comply with the consent decree, disability-related job supports involving BHDDH and ORS must be merged with DLT, the state’s primary economic development agency, Cooper said.