The mood amongst anyone with an interest in provincial Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) support funding has taken a 180-degree turn in the last 12 months.
The mood amongst anyone with an interest in provincial Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) support funding has taken a 180-degree turn in the last 12 months.
"We’re not dealing with the fear," said Linda Maxwell, executive director of the Olds-based Accredited Supports for the Community (ASC), an organization that assists local people with disabilities and channels PDD money to those individuals. "That was the big thing, our families were really reeling from what they were hearing."
At this time last year, those families were just beginning to digest news from the province that the funding model for PDD support would change due to a $42-million shortfall in the Community Access supports budget that funds PDD programs.
The other news was that the province was putting more emphasis on a standardized tool known as the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) to evaluate the needs of a person living with developmental disabilities.
These changes, it was announced at the time, were to come into effect by July 1, 2013.
Families and service providers were not only concerned about whether or not they would receive the money needed to support PDD clients or if the SIS would accurately measure a person’s needs, but also about whether such changes could happen in so short a period of time.
But Maxwell and Verlie Weiss, ASC’s services director, said provincial associate ministers of services for persons with disabilities have listened to those concerns and ASC, along with other service providers in the province and the families of people living with developmental disabilities, have seen the government take some positive steps in the last year.
For starters, Weiss said, the funding decreases announced last year were "repealed" and the province has announced it will retain Community Access support funding.
At the same time, she added, a move towards "outcome-based contracting" took effect in October.
"That means that we’re working around accountability of the impact that our services are having on people," Weiss said.
Previously, funding contracts were based on "reporting back on the hours and units you were spending with a person rather than what you were actually accomplishing," Weiss said.
Service providers were given a year to make the transition to the outcome-based contracts and these changes, along with the time given to accomplish the transitions, are a relief to ASC, she said.
"They (the province) determined that they needed to put the focus on the transition and the change. The service provider sector is very supportive of the changes and the transition to move to outcome-based service delivery. But having a budget issue at the same time is what created the concern. So the government put the budget reductions aside in order to give us time to do the transition."
According to the province, 99 per cent of service providers have signed over to the new funding contract in the last year.
As for concerns about the SIS assessment, Maxwell said the government is looking at other tools besides SIS to determine a person’s needs.
Cheryl Chichak, a spokeswoman for Alberta Human Services, said Naresh Bhardwaj, Alberta’s associate minister of services for persons with disabilities, announced roughly two weeks ago that the province will do consultations with families and service providers about how the SIS tool can be better used.
She added SIS is only the first part of a needs assessment and there is "an entire service planning process that happens after SIS."
As part of that process, a service planning team made up of the person with a disability, their family and service provider, and staff from PDD sit down to look at areas such as that person’s goals and the nature of the community he or she lives in to determine that person’s specific needs.
Chichak said right now, 96 per cent of SIS assessments across Alberta have been completed.
Maxwell said another move she sees as positive at the provincial level is the integration of PDD with the Family Support for Children with Disabilities and Alberta Brain Injury Initiative programs that is set to take place April 1.
"The reason we think that’s positive is because we already work with both (programs), but even if we didn’t it allows for an easier transition for families when their children are turning 18 to plan for adulthood," she said.
Previously there was a gap between services for children and adults, Maxwell added, and this integration "should close that gap" by bringing together the resources of the three programs in a more efficient way.
Staff from those programs, service providers and families can now more easily communicate and plan with each other, she said.
Weiss and Maxwell said they don’t yet know what they’ll receive this year in PDD monies, which make up the bulk of ASC’s funding, from the government.
Last year, ASC ended up receiving a bump in provincial grants compared to 2012 funding to cover staff wage increases.
Chichak said PDD Central Region’s contract specialists are meeting with service providing agencies over the next couple of weeks and the hope is to have new contracts finalized by early April, which means agencies will have their budgets at that time.
This year, the budget for disability support services, which includes PDD, is $967 million, a $54-million increase over last year.
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