Concerns from families and support providers across the province have prompted the Alberta government to push back the start date of a new process for providing Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) support funding.
Concerns from families and support providers across the province have prompted the Alberta government to push back the start date of a new process for providing Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) support funding.
In March, following the public announcement of a $42-million shortfall in the Community Access supports budget that funds PDD programs, the province stated the funding model for PDD support would change as of July 1.
Under the current model, there are six regions in Alberta providing PDD support and each region works with people needing assistance on an individual basis to determine what funding is needed to meet the person’s support needs.
The new model that takes effect July 1, however, will rely on standardized testing across the province using a tool called the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) to evaluate a person’s needs.
The results of the testing will determine how much support money a person with disability receives.
Blaine Gillis, chief executive officer for PDD Central Region, said the new model will provide consistency for funding across the province while ensuring people are receiving the right support to meet their needs.
But after the provincial associate minister of services for persons with disabilities carried out nearly two dozen community discussions throughout the province in the past four months where concerns were brought up about the short transition time from the traditional model to the new funding template, the government decided to offer service providers the option of extending current funding contracts for three months to make the transition easier or adopting the new model.
Gillis said while "there seem to be a lot of support from agencies on where we’re going with the overall concepts and the shift towards more independence and increased inclusion," some families and service providers have felt the pace of the transition was too quick.
Linda Maxwell, executive director of the Olds-based Accredited Supports to the Community, an organization that assists local people with disabilities and channels provincial PDD money to those individuals, said her organization felt the transition timeline was not reasonable.
But of more concern, she said, were inconsistencies with the SIS tool the government is using to assess people.
The results of the assessments are "surprising us," Maxwell said.
"Because they don’t match what they know about the person even after working with someone for years and years."
Maxwell provided the example of two local men she knows.
One is independent, married, working and needing little support.
The other man needs 24-hour support, requires reminders about his personal care and can’t make legal decisions on his own.
Yet when the SIS assessment was completed, the results showed the needs of the two men were similar and low on a scale of one to seven.
"And that’s the kind of experience we’re hearing from families, from colleagues," Maxwell said.
She also said she is concerned about how the assessments are being conducted by the people hired by the province to carry them out.
Families answering some of the questions during the assessment may not understand what they’re being asked and the assessor may not be providing the best information for the families to make accurate statements about the needs of a loved one, Maxwell said.
The assessment includes questions where assessors ask a guardian how many times a day they have to assist a person with personal care, she added, and if the guardian says once at night when the child showers and brushes his or her teeth, "without really stopping and thinking about how many times a day they really do that," they might be selling the person in need short.
"It’s probably all day long," Maxwell said. "Noticing that the shirt’s not tucked in, noticing if there’s something on the face, noticing if they’re not dressed for the weather. So it’s like a continuous process."
But if the guardian only responds "once a day," a lower level of support is indicated, Maxwell said.
"The responder has to understand the question and the person asking the questions has to ask the right questions," she said.
Maxwell estimates that roughly 130 people in the Olds area are receiving PDD support.
Overall, she said, her organization has little information about the province’s assessment tool and what resources they’ll have to work with once the transition takes place.
Maxwell added that having such a short period of time to understand how the province is assessing people and if a change in support levels is needed will ultimately put support providers and families in difficult positions.
"Because if we’re talking about people who traditionally need what we call that 24-hour support model… then we can’t just pull supports from people and say 'Good luck.’"
Families need time to express concerns as well, she said.
Since the province has been conducting the assessment for the past three years, Maxwell said she’s also concerned that the government will be making funding decisions now for needs that may have changed as an individual has aged.
Gillis acknowledges there are "anomalies" with the assessment that need to be looked at as other service providers and families have raised similar concerns about the SIS tool.
Families have indicated the government has not provided as much information as necessary about the new funding and support model and some agencies have expressed concerns that "the right people weren’t at the table when we did the interview," he added.
"We have indicated both to families and agencies that for those (results) where they feel that just doesn’t look right or they think we got it wrong, we’ve asked them to identify those to us," he said. "We will be looking at doing a review to make sure that we do have the right information and then possibly a reassessment."
Gillis also said a reassessment could be carried out if the original assessment was carried out three years ago and changes have happened in a person’s life since then such as a new illness or the death of a caregiver.
The province isn’t just considering the SIS results when making funding decisions, he added.
It is also looking at the "natural supports" a person has around them, the "unique circumstances" in a person’s life and where they live.
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