2017 TASH Conference

This presentation will address the question of whether managed long-term services and supports can create better access to supports and better inclusion and employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities than traditional long-term services and supports programs. Speakers from Tennessee will reflect on the state's experience with managed long-term services and supports for people with physical, developmental and intellectual disabilities. Presenters will discuss what they have learned about how to use managed care as a tool to advance equity, opportunity and inclusion and to create more accountability for the use of public funds to advance the civil and human rights of people with disabilities.

Do you want a job? How could you answer this question if you have never had volunteer experience or held a job in high school or in the summer? For individuals with disabilities who have not had the typical exposures to work that most other young adults have, person-centered planning focused on employment must begin with exploration and discovery. MCOs are embracing this challenge. A new service, Exploration, is designed to help an individual make an informed choice about the type of employment they would like to pursue. The service includes introductory activities to identify interests and skills and includes business tours, job shadowing or informational interviews and is highly individualized. Another service, Discovery, supports individuals to more deeply investigate how a determined interest translates to a work environment. In this presentation, Amerigroup will share some of their experiences with these new services and getting people successfully employed in communities. State service providing agencies are under new pressures to get people with disabilities in to the workforce. Current policy directions support "Employment First" as the service that should take priority for supporting someone during the day. The HCBS settings Final Rule has set new parameters for the characteristics and qualities required for community-based employment services. The Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act requires access to several stages of educational and vocational rehabilitation services to engage youth with disabilities in employment prior to being sent to workshop or day habilitation services. But if a high school student or young adult has not been exposed to work that most other youth are experiencing, from what perspective can they consider their options for employment? This challenge has several aspects. First, is setting expectations. Parents expect or require that their "typical" children will work, but may have reservations about holding this expectation for their children with disabilities. Expectations are also set in schools, and the extent to which students are in more segregated or specialized settings, the greater the chances that expectations for their employment are reduced. The economy outside the school system also figures into the equation in a limited job market, how do we encourage employers to consider hiring youth with unique challenges and skill sets? How do the rest of us decide what we might like to do for employment, and conversely, what we would avoid? We learn through experiencing different aspects of employment or through relationships with peers, family members, siblings who are working or exploring employment themselves. This session will describe the Exploration and Discovery Services that Amerigroup is using in a Medicaid managed care program for individuals with I/DD. Several characteristics of the service are crucial to its impact on improving the employability of people with disabilities; the duration of the service; the rate for the service, the flexibility of the service, how initial assessment informs the service, and how the individual's experience from the exploration service is incorporated in their person-centered plan.