NOW & COMP Waiver Training Series

The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD) Division of Developmental Disabilities is pleased to announce the FY11 DD NOW and COMP Waiver Series - Self Directed Services Training.

This training series will provide an interactive, hands-on and problem-solving approach to understanding self directed waiver services.  As a Participant/Representative who chose to self-direct your waiver services and supports, you are encouraged to attend one of these sessions to enhance your knowledge and assist you in using these services effectively and efficiently. 

These sessions will be conducted in multiple locations throughout the state in February - April 2011.  Please see the attached announcement for details about the training and how to register.  Registration is quick & easy online at http://www.cviog.uga.edu/dbhdd/pdt.php.

This announcement, and all DD training announcements, will be posted on the Department's training website at http://dbhdd.georgia.gov/training.  Click on the link “Developmental Disabilities Training Announcements”.

I look forward to seeing you at one of the training sessions.  Feel free to share this announcement with others you know who self-direct their DD waiver services and supports.

Advocacy Update

Monday morning and good news just don’t seem to go together, but they do today. Because of Federal regulations, Department of Community Health cannot require co-payments for recipients of the Katie Beckett program. This is great news for the roughly 2,000 families who receive services for their children with disabilities.

With agencies, the Governor, and legislators looking for potential cuts and the needs of people with disabilities continuing to increase, the real question becomes, in a time of economic struggle, how do we find revenue for services for our citizens with disabilities?

Last year, a Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness was formed to study and make recommendations to Georgia’s current tax structure. They released a report several weeks ago, and it looks like the recommendations would overall include transitioning Georgia’s tax base from relying on income tax to consumption taxes. The council recommends the return of sales taxes levied on food, requiring sales tax on personal and household services, and lowering the personal income tax to 4% over the next few years. AADD is a part of a broad alliance of organizations that will encourage legislators to take a balanced approach to our state’s fiscal challenges. 2020 Georgia is a statewide coalition of over 75 agencies and community leaders that believe that there is a gap in the needs of Georgians in healthcare, education and other services and that spending cuts alone will not take care of meeting those needs. A balanced practical approach includes finding efficiencies and revenue. Tax Council’s Full Report.

Gracewood Tries to Ease Fears

A meeting Tuesday night between state officials and patients’ families and employees of the Gracewood campus of East Central Regional Hospital could be summed up like this: “Gracewood will still be here,” said Beverly Rollins, the executive director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities for the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.

“That’s not what we’re hearing,” muttered Dale Beasley, whose daughter has been at Gracewood for 40 years.

The meeting, called by state Sen. Hardie Davis, D-Augusta, and the Augusta delegation, was to explain plans to move more Gracewood patients into the community. The department reached a settlement in October with the U.S. Department of Justice over conditions in the state’s mental hospital system, which includes Gracewood.It calls for the state to move 150 patients a year out of Gracewood and into the community, “provided such placement is consistent with the individual’s informed choice,” according to the settlement agreement.

That could prove difficult to comply with in the case of Gracewood patients such as Erica Knighton, who doesn’t speak, suffers from seizures and has the functional capacity of “an infant,” said her mother, Ann, the president of the East Central Georgia Family Council.Yet the family has been told that Erica pointed to a picture of a house and said she wanted to there, a story her mother finds ridiculous, and a staff member put a pen in Erica’s hand and helped her sign some papers.

“They’re (trying) to railroad people out,” Knighton said. Rollins repeatedly stressed that it will be the family’s choice. “We won’t violate their choice,” she said. The settlement agreement calls for offering 150 patients a year the chance to move out and receive services in the community. By 2015, any remaining patients “shall be served in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. ”The families say it really means the closing of Gracewood. Rollins said that’s not the case. “The thing about Gracewood is that there is always going to be individuals who will need that level of care,” she said. “So Gracewood will need to be around for that. ”Department spokesman Tom Wilson said that as other facilities close, their remaining patients likely will end up at Gracewood.

The state is attempting to comply with the 1999 Olmstead decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act required Georgia and other states to serve people in state institutions in the least restrictive setting whenever possible, including providing community services. Beasley said she struggled with the decision to put her daughter in an institution, and the only appropriate place for her daughter is at Gracewood. “If my daughter could stay in a community setting, why would I have ever let her go to a state institution?” she said.

Gracewood Tries to Ease Fears, Integration Worries Families
By: Jeff Corwin
The Augusta Chronicle
January 18th, 2011