The Family and Friends Newsletter,
from your Area 3 Family Care Council
|
Alachua,
Bradford, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Lafayette, Levy,
Putnam, Suwanee, and Union counties
fcc3a@att.net 352-955-6165
Spring has
been a busy season for Florida families and friends! In May,
some of us headed to Orlando for the 21st National
Home and Community Based Services Waiver Conference. Then we
began the month of June with our annual Family Café—a weekend of
sharing support, resources, and information. This newsletter
will highlight some of the important topics presented at each
conference, as well as links to organizations. Please feel free
to share the newsletter, so that many more families and friends
may find helpful information and resources.
Protecting
Your Legal Rights:
When You Need
Help Making Decisions
Melinda
Coulter, of the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, offered
some options for protecting the rights of individuals who need
help with some important decisions. She expressed an important
goal: To allow Floridians in need of decision-making assistance
to use their abilities to the fullest while receiving only the
amount of assistance needed. Some of the tools for
decision-making assistance are: Client Advocate, Durable Power
of Attorney, Co-signer (on bank account), and Representative
Payee (receives benefits used for another individual’s needs).
These are all options OTHER THAN guardianship. Even if
guardianship is the type of assistance needed by an individual,
this does not always mean removing all of an individual’s
rights. The Florida Developmental Disabilities Council makes
the booklet Planning Ahead available online at
fddc.org. And the APD,
http://apd.myflorida.com, publishes a brochure titled
Protecting Legal Rights: It’s in Your hands!
Finally, an attorney should be contacted to discuss guardianship
and options other than guardianship.
The Quest for
Quality
Carol McDuff
and Marian Olivier Reyes of the Delmarva Foundation,
www.dfmc-florida.org, discussed “Quality Management in a
Person-Directed System” at the HCBS Waiver conference. They
emphasized a focus on outcomes: results that reflect
communicated choices that matter most to the person (being
served on one of the waivers). Carol and Marian described two
new tools being used to help Waiver Support Coordinators and
other waiver service providers promote each individual’s valued
outcomes. The WiSCC and CORE are new evaluation tools used by
Delmarva to measure the quality of service delivery by waiver
support coordinators and providers. These tools rely on
individual interviews to ensure a person-centered focus that
measures personal outcomes. Both tools are available online at
www.dfmc-florida.org.
Anne Buechner,
from the Council on Quality and Leadership discussed these
Personal Outcome Measures that they have found to influence
quality of life for persons with and without disabilities.
Three
important personal outcome measures are: 1) People choose
services; 2) People exercise rights; and 3) People choose where
they work. Individuals who achieve these “biggest bang”
outcomes are likely to achieve a significant proportion of the
25 total Personal Outcome Measures identified by
the Council as important quality-of-life indicators. Promoting
quality of life can begin by determining what each outcome means
to an individual and how important it is to him or her.
Susan de
Beaugrine and Linda Tupper, of the Delmarva Foundation,
introduced My Personal Compass, a document sponsored by
the Delmarva Foundation (www.dfmc-florida.org),
the Agency for Healthcare Administration (http://ahca.myflorida.com)
and the APD (http://apd.myflorida.com).
The Compass can be used by consumers and families to determine
the quality of the services they receive, suggest ways to
improve services, and increase awareness of individual rights.
The Family Care Council (fcc3a@att.net)
can be contacted for information on the Personal Outcome
Measures and My Personal Compass.
The state of
Florida has been awarded a Real Choice Systems Change Grant that
will be used to promote quality improvement throughout the state
in all areas of service delivery. Each Area Office of the APD
has selected a staff member to become certified as the Area
Quality Leader (AQL). These individuals will undergo rigorous
training (this training began in March) and complete an
extensive leadership reading list. The AQL will develop a
steering committee—including self-advocates, families,
providers, and other stakeholders—to advise and assist on
quality improvement initiatives in the Area. Info on the
Quality Improvement Steering Committee will be reported in
future FCC newsletters.
Other
Resources:
Florida
Medicaid:
http://ahca.myflorida.com/Medicaid/index.shtml
Clearinghouse
on Disability Information (a program of the Governor’s Americans
With Disabilities Act Working Group): 877-232-4968
Upcoming
Events:
August 12-14,
“Inclusion Matters!” A statewide conference connecting
individuals interested in making community inclusion happen,
Ft.Lauderdale, 800-482-8274
August 20,
“Collaboration Touch Down” A free conference of the Family
Network on Disabilities in partnership with the FDLRS Springs
and others, Topics: IDEA, parent/professional communication,
IEPs, transition, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Gainesville,
352-241-4152
August 29-31,
Florida’s Biennial American’s with Disabilities Act Conference,
Orlando, 850-487-3423
|
