A New Year, A Chance for New Beginnings

It’s been a busy start to the New Year, which fortunately has brought some positive changes for our son’s care.  December was a real low point, but a personnel change at my son’s supported-living agency and more energetic efforts at DDS to coordinate his care are helping improve the situation, slowly but surely.

I’ve also been busy, as some of you already know, trying to get my viewpoint on “The Citizens with Intellectually Disabilities Civil Rights Restoration Act” (B21-0385) before a broader public.  I don’t share the negative views of Mr Connelly, the lawyer who wrote in the Post last month opposing the bill (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/peril-for-intellectually-disabled-dc-residents/2015/12/23/6d0b1ebe-a8ed-11e5-8058-480b572b4aae_story.html), and I was happy the Post agreed to print my response today  (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-district-should-move-away-from-court-ordered-services-for-those-with-intellectual-disabilities/2016/01/18/750d39bc-bbd5-11e5-85cd-5ad59bc19432_story.html).

So you know my position, but I do understand the concerns of the person who commented on my blog post “Overdue Change for the District” (November 15).  I don’t think it’s quite fair for the writer to say that s/he only learned about the bill from lawyers, since DDS disseminated information about a series of briefings back in October which I also broadcast in an email on October 29.  Still, the writer expresses a heartfelt worry that I know is shared by many people whose family members or other loved ones have been receiving services in D.C. for a long while.  I believe that the reforms and progress in DDS over the past few years have come more from solid leadership than from judges’ orders.  At the same time, I realize change is frightening, especially for people who experienced the poor quality of services that used to be delivered by the District’s disability agency.  The closure of Forest Haven didn’t magically produce a high quality of supports for people with intellectual disabilities, and some of you reading this feel it’s only the legal system that has held District officials to account. 

I listened hard to folks who expressed worries about the bill at Shaw library back in November and more recently I’ve talked with others struggling over whether to support or oppose this bill.   If you’re leaning against it, please remember this:  anybody who’s now getting services through civil commitment can keep those services.  This bill will only lift the system of civil commitment for those who don’t now receive services in that way and for those who become eligible in the future.  Already, the majority of D.C.’s intellectually disabled citizens get their services without any court involvement whatever.  Also, across the rest of the country the courts don’t routinely order community-based supports for people with intellectual disabilities, either.

Whether or not someone gets services through civil commitment, organizations such as the Quality Trust and University Legal Services will continue to play their central, and essential, monitoring and oversight role.  Active self-advocates in Project Action! will continue demanding better services and responsiveness from DDS.  Involved family members and friends like those who show up at the Supporting Families meetings will continue to stand up for those they care for – through guardianship, powers of attorney, or the new supported decision making agreement that also would be established under the bill.   There have been vast improvements in DDS itself over the past decade, but there are also better watchdogs. 

Watchdogs – advocates – don’t have to have law degrees.  I truly believe that D.C. has left the dark days behind and that we need to move forward now with confidence to establish a system that doesn’t require court involvement.  Please, if the current system is working well for your loved one, then keep it.  But I hope you won’t impose civil commitment on others by asking the council to oppose this bill.

Whatever your position on the bill is, though, I’ll see you at the hearing on January 27 at 11:00, room 412 of the Wilson Building.

A Day of Gifts

I spent most of today at the meeting of the Supporting Families Community of Practice (CoP).  If you haven’t attended one of these meetings, by all means go to the DDS website (www.dds.dc.gov) and click on the link to the CoP to the left under “Top DDS Pages.”  You’ll find a wealth of information that’s been presented at past meetings, and hopefully that will make you interested in attending next time.  Incidentally, next month there will be a special workshop, date and place not yet set, where family members can practice some of the person-centered tools presented at earlier CoP meetings.  Then in March there will be a regular CoP meeting focused on employment, at which RSA (What’s that? See my page on acronyms to the right!) will be present for a dialogue on current employment efforts and where we need to go from here.

Before talking about today’s meeting, I want to say something about the statement in my last blog post, “Giving Thanks,”about some Direct Support Professionals facing a decline in pay rates due to a new wage formula.  Some folks have questioned that, and I’ve tried to get a clarification from DDS since the subject is confusing and I’m no expert.  I haven’t yet gotten a clear statement from DDS, but based on conversation I think I now understand that those in DSP positions will not see pay reductions.  I invite a comment from DDS on my blog to make this even clearer.

So – today’s meeting.  The agenda was packed with a wealth of information – an overview of the first three years of the CoP’s work, a presentation on the recently-issued draft 2016 Olmstead Plan, an update on the District’s No Wrong Door initiative, a briefing on the proposed “Citizens with Intellectual Disabilities Civil Rights Restoration Act of 2015,” and a very lively discussion about ideas for the 2017-21 five-year plan for the Developmental Disabilities Council.   You’ll be able to find the key documents from the meeting on the DDS website very shortly.  I want to call attention in particular to the fact that the D.C. council hearing on the Civil Rights Restoration Act (see my November 15 post, “Overdue Change for the District”) is going to take place at 11:00 on January 27.  This is an extremely important piece of legislation which can be found at https://trackbill.com/bill/citizens-with-intellectual-disabilities-civil-righ/1203275/.  I’ll be discussing the bill in a future blog post and will definitely be testifying on January 27^th.  I hope you too will take this one seriously and either submit testimony, show up and testify, or both.

Besides serving as an important vehicle for learning about key initiatives such as this new legislation, the Supporting Families Community of Practice has evolved into an essential forum for people and their families to come face to face with decision makers, talk about the realities we face right now in trying to navigate the system, and push together for a better future.  Today there was some excellent give and take between presenters and participants, and Erin Leveton (erin.leveton@dc.gov) made a very good decision in the early afternoon to offer an “open mic” session.  Even though this shortened the sessions on the last two agenda items, the time was well spent in order to give folks in the audience a chance to raise burning issues affecting their lives. 

When the meeting ended, we all had to return to those present-day realities that remind us of the long road still ahead – I know I did!  Still, it was obvious that everyone present welcomed the uplifting tone of this day, and hopefulness is the torch that lights the way toward progress.  Happy holidays to all, and let’s carry that torch into 2016.

Giving Thanks

When you’re trying to advocate for change – for a person you love, for a community you care about – you can find yourself talking only about what isn’t working.  So I want to take a moment, with Thanksgiving upon us, to make a special point of thanking the Direct Support Professionals who work with my son, and those others throughout the city making it their business to keep those we love safe, happy and making progress in their lives.

As I write this I’m thinking of one individual who has been a part of my son’s life since he first came back home to D.C. last year.  In fact she’s the only person besides us who was in the room for his first ISP meeting during that first crazy week when he was starting to receive services.  His daytime community navigator has also been a rock, even when the role has been thankless.  There are many others, though.  Even when things haven’t been going smoothly at the management level, I’ve been impressed by the integrity, kindness and patience of almost every DSP who’s come through our son’s life.  They don’t have an easy job, and they often face the same headaches we do, along with quite a few more of their own.  One standard I’ve always tried to stick to is not to add to their headaches, but to treat the DSPs with respect and show my appreciation, since I know they’re on the front lines.

It may be even tougher for some of them to feel thankful this year, since a new formula D.C.’s been required to institute is going to mean lower rates of pay for some of the people providing support under the I/DD waiver.  I’m not an expert on all the job categories so I’m not sure who is directly affected, but it reminds me to be even more appreciative. 

So this Thanksgiving, have a wonderful holiday with your family – and thank a DSP!

Overdue Change for the District

I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed lately.  Getting on the same page with my son’s new supported-living provider has been a challenge, though things may be starting to improve.  My son keeps skipping out on his IDS program because it’s not meeting his needs and we’re waiting for DDA to offer any solutions.  And the D.C. Office of the Chief Financial Officer, for the third time this year, has misplaced my son’s monthly check – this time, lost it for good.  You know it: every day there’s some obstacle or headache standing in the way of the real work of improving the lives of those we care about.

So it helped me to lift my head above my day-to-day problems on November 12 and attend one of the DDS briefings about the legislation that’s been introduced into the D.C. council.  This bill, the “Citizens with Intellectual Disabilities Civil Rights Restoration Act,” addresses one of the major hurdles in the way of moving D.C. into the 21^st century of disability rights - namely the practice of commitment.  At this point, please look to the right and read my posts under the label “Past Reforms” (especially “35 Years and Counting” and “Where We’ve Come From”) so you’ll know what I’m talking about, and also take a look at the page “Acronyms You Should Know.”  Now you’ve done that, please keep reading!

About 1/3 of the people receiving services from DDA under the I/DD waiver still have to be “committed” by the D.C. courts in order to get those services.   We are the ONLY place in the country where this is still true, and I’ll admit that I find that horrifying.  When my son was found eligible to receive services, I was terrified he would have to be “committed” and that a lawyer would step in between him and us to decide what supports he needed.  Coming from that perspective, it was helpful to me to sit in the Shaw library and hear from people whose family members are under commitment:  it made me more understanding even though it hasn’t changed my mind.  There are people who still remember when the only way to get D.C. to keep people with disabilities safe was for the court to be watching over the government’s shoulder.  A huge amount has changed since that time, but it’s not hard to understand why some people like a system they know, especially if they happen to have a lawyer they like.  For people in that position, the bill allows people under commitment to continue if that is what they, or a trusted person, decide they should do.

And on the subject of “trusted person,” the bill also proposes an alternative to court-appointed guardianship, in the form of a Supported Decision Making (SDM) agreement to allow the person with a disability to formally designate someone who can help her/him make important decisions.  Supported decision making is an essential concept, and I also believe everything needs to be done to avoid guardianship where possible.  I’m going to be taking a very close look at the bill, though, to make sure the proposed SDM agreement doesn’t have unintended consequences where a different legal alternative to guardianship, the power of attorney, is concerned.  Both are needed.

Erin Leveton (erin.leveton@dc.gov) said the bill will soon be posted on the DDS website and that a joint hearing by the council’s Health and Human Services and Judiciary committees will soon be scheduled, probably in January.  I’ll do my best to keep folks informed about the timing, but between now and then, there are a couple of other important things to mark on the calendar.  The report to the council on what it would take to expand eligibility for services to all people with developmental disabilities will be submitted on December 1, and DDS has also promised to post that report on its website.  And the next meeting of the Supporting Families Community of Practice will take place on December 14. 

Speaking personally, I’m hoping that some of the challenges we’ve been facing will smooth out over the holiday season so that we and our son will see fewer obstacles and more person-centered solutions by the time the New Year rolls around. 

One Year In: Policy

Nothing moves fast in any bureaucracy, as I should know from my years in the federal government.  When it comes to addressing the needs of D.C. citizens with developmental disabilities I can get pretty impatient, but fair’s fair and it’s important to recognize where progress is occurring.

Predictably, DDS has made most headway on things that it could do without a lot of outside approvals.  Some significant accomplishments I’ve noticed: 1) DDS is about to issue new guidelines on how it will interpret the current IQ cutoff for DDA eligibility, which could have an impact on those who tested slightly above 69 before age 18.  2) DDS is pushing to expand people’s civil rights, by getting a bill introduced in the D.C. council to roll back the requirement for legal commitment (fingers crossed for council action) and by working with the Quality Trust, Developmental Disabilities Council, D.C. superior court and others to popularize alternatives to guardianship.  3) The Supporting Families Community of Practice (http://dds.dc.gov/page/dc-supporting-families-community-practice), which DDS co-leads, has successfully attracted new people and families, provided training on person-centered tools, and kickstarted efforts throughout the D.C. government to make ours a more supportive community for citizens with disabilities and their families.  4) DDS has made visible progress in providing more and clearer information on its website and elsewhere, arranging for those unable to attend to call in to some of its meetings, and exploring more weekend or evening meetings (let erin.leveton@dc.gov know if you like this idea).

Some things do require federal approval, and after more than a year of waiting, DDS has finally received approval from CMS for a large package of important amendments to the I/DD waiver (if you’re having trouble with the alphabet soup, see the page “Acronyms You Should Know” to the right of this blog post).  This has been a heavy lift, and now that it has come through DDA should be able to move ahead with developing the new and much-discussed Individual and Family Services waiver, joining DDA and RSA forces to help young people explore career paths and develop skills, and streamlining onerous documentation and other requirements that can undermine the goal of person-centered planning and implementation.   Laura Nuss and her new acting deputy for DDA, Jared Morris (thomas.morris@dc.gov) are promising to launch a DDA Advisory Council that will play a more meaningful role than the old Advisory Committee.  I’ve put in my application, and urge you to do so as well by contacting Alison Whyte at alison.whyte@dc.gov.

You may wonder why I haven’t said anything yet about closing out the Evans lawsuit and broadening eligibility for DDA services.  Laura Nuss isn’t going to forget Evans, and she was so confident about getting over the final hurdles that she didn’t put any new money into this year’s budget for Evans compliance.  On eligibility criteria, following the April budget hearing the council asked DDS for a study of the number of people with developmental disabilities and the costs associated with expanding services.  I understand that survey is under way and should have its findings by December.

One Year In: Personal

Even without a child in school anymore, fall is one of my busiest seasons.  But although I haven’t posted to my blog in a month, I’ve been thinking hard about how things have unfolded over the past year.  It’s actually been over a year - 16 months since my son began receiving services from DDS and 14 months since I started my blog.  But even if my timing’s a little off, the point is that it’s time to take stock.  In this blog post I’ll talk about where things stand for my son and our family; in the next, I’ll talk about policy issues.  And sometime soon I plan to post a page of acronyms to help you wade through the alphabet soup without having to go back to earlier posts.

So, on the personal front:

-          Supported living.  You know if you’ve been reading my blog for a while that our son recently transitioned to a new provider agency for his home support when the agency we’d chosen in 2014 sadly left D.C. after a little over a year (“Sometimes It’s Personal,” 8/4/15).  It’s too early to make a firm judgment about the quality of his ongoing care, but I can say that the promise of continuity hasn’t come true.  The new organization has changed the entire management team overseeing his apartment and his ISP, including one direct support professional (DSP) who was especially close to him.  Fortunately a few of his DSPs remain the same – for now – although this is small comfort since it could change anytime, as we’ve just been reminded.  Still, we believe he’s safe and has staff who mean well by him, and he has a reasonably compatible roommate as well.  We just wish we could rely on the promises made by both DDS and the new agency about a "seamless" transition.

-          Individualized day services.  IDS was a new option last year when our son began receiving services in DC.  Our experience is a clear demonstration of the difficulties this day program has had in delivering for the people who’ve chosen it.  It was originally intended as an alternative to work or other fixed-location day programs for people of retirement age who still wanted to be occupied productively during daytime hours.   Increasingly it’s also been chosen by people such as my son, who are transitioning from school and still in a period of exploration befitting their age.  Over the past year his IDS programming has helped our son get to know the D.C. community again, and better, after a four-year absence.  He has had a caring and sincere community navigator, and has sometimes had a companion who has obliged him to develop skills of compromise and collaboration.  However, our son needs an individualized but structured program of day supports, and the only structure he’s had so far has come from the courses our family has identified and enrolled him in.  Given the number of daytime opportunities available, and our own efforts to bring options to the provider agency’s attention, we’ve been hard pressed to understand the lack of creativity shown in developing an individualized program to address those needs.

-          Skills development and employment.  On this subject I refer you to my earlier post (“It’s About Work,” 8/21/15) which describes our discouraging personal experience with trying to cut through the bureaucracy and get the support our son needs to prepare himself for competitive employment.  A ping-pong match between DDA and RSA isn’t the way to help a person move forward in life.

Someone who’s been a very good friend to our son and our family told me a few months ago, “You don’t know it yet, but you’re at the beginning of a long process.”  I begin to understand what she meant.  But I’m an impatient person, and I’m continuing to push.  I hope you will, too.

So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya

Early this summer I wrote in a blog post (“Where’s the Follow Up?” 6/17/15) about the arrival of the new DDS deputy director in charge of the Developmental Disabilities Administration, Holly Morrison.  I had been told there would be a press release announcing her arrival, but I never saw one.  And when she left in August, it was treated like a state secret.

I had met with the director and her new deputy on July 31 about my son’s transition to a new provider agency (“Sometimes It’s Personal,” 8/4/15), as well as some of the policy-level issues I had raised in the June post I cited above.  It was a pleasure to see that there was going to be someone on the job who could take some of the burden off the DDS director and give DDA management the attention it deserves.  Following that meeting, Ms. Morrison jumped on a couple of important matters, about which she last communicated with me on August 17.  I emailed her back on August 18 and again on August 19, and when I got no response and saw others in DDS were taking her off the addressee list I began to wonder.  On August 26 I reached out and asked someone I thought might know whether she was on vacation or was already gone.  Sure enough, I learned she had left the week before.

So Holly Morrison came, and left.  Fast.  Her predecessor, Cathy Anderson, lasted much longer but also disappeared very quickly.  These quick departures are a matter of concern.  Too much is riding on the DDS director herself.  She needs a reliable deputy to oversee the DDA side of the operation so that she can look to the bigger stuff.  I don’t know why two deputies have moved on so quickly, and it may be a little embarrassing that Holly Morrison left after only two months, but that’s no reason to keep it secret.

There I was, sending emails to her, and no one in DDS bothered to mention she was gone.  The director and others included on my emails to Ms. Morrison were simply silent about her departure for days on end.  When I learned she had left and raised this silence with the director, Ms. Nuss told me she does not “post such things on the website nor send personnel announcements to families.”  There was no out-of-office message from Holly Morrison’s mailbox.  Is an out-of-office message a “public announcement?”  How long was I, and anyone else trying to reach her, supposed to wait before being told she was gone?  We were notified before our son’s service coordinator left recently, but the deputy director was gone for days and there was no communication.  This isn’t a matter of “personnel announcements to families,” but rather a matter of DC government transparency – or lack of it. 

And, in fact, I do believe that the comings and goings of someone as senior as the deputy director of an agency deserve a public announcement – on the website, in a press release and any other way DDS can get the news out.  Why wouldn’t DDS do that?

It's About Work!

A quick personal note:  Some of you who know our family have reached out with words of reassurance and comfort about the DDA transition we’re going through.  I appreciate that.  But I write my blog to shine a light on what isn’t working well, and I don’t want anyone to think we believe we or our son are the unfortunate ones.  Far from it.  Services are mostly going well for him, and because we are in his life we make sure of that.  So I hope I never sound like a whiner.

Now, down to business.  Or to be more specific, down to – work.  Because DC is an Employment First!  (http://dds.dc.gov/page/employment-first) jurisdiction, and that means we collectively want to be doing everything in our power to get anyone who wants employment into a job.  That’s the headliner, but oh boy, are there problems getting there – and some of those problems are definitely avoidable.  Again I’ll draw on our experience as an illustration (not whining!).

I wrote several months ago (“DDS:  Intentions Versus Reality,” March 1) that the minute I mentioned a meeting to talk about my son’s potential job interests, his then-service coordinator created roadblocks, insisting he had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and hand things over to RSA before we could even say the word “work.”  But that’s just wrong.  For one thing, there were plenty of team meetings that included the whole team, RSA included, when a previous service coordinator was on the job.  Second, our son receives Individualized Day Services (IDS), and DDA policy on IDS (http://dds.dc.gov/publication/individualized-day-services-final-rulemaking) specifically states that IDS should provide “Highly individualized, structured activities that  emphasize social skills development, and/or vocational exploration, and life skills training, within an inclusive community setting.”  Still, no matter how much we protested that it wasn’t necessary, both the service coordinator and his IDS provider pushed for a referral to RSA.  No harm done, we thought, so we went along with it.

The good side:  He got referred to a much more active and engaged vocational specialist than the one he previously had.  The bad side, which swamped the good:  He has a very specific type of interest, in many ways driven more by characteristics of the job site and comfort with the people he’ll be working with than by the general goal of employment.  The process of “helping” him, though, was driven by meeting after meeting, leading our overwhelmed son to become more and more anxious and leading the RSA specialist to come back and say she had to close his case since he was saying no.  Not too surprising.  In fact, completely predictable.

We had been asking for his slight, budding interest to be encouraged, approached creatively, within the IDS guidelines.  It was DDA and the IDS provider who insisted instead on opening the RSA door, and it was premature.  He needed to be led along, given an opportunity to explore the type of job site in which he had expressed possible interest – maybe through some volunteering, or through some structured discussion with people at likely workplaces.   Instead he got meetings and paperwork, which shut down the glimmer of interest he had expressed and gave him cold feet.  This narrow-minded approach isn’t the path to Employment First, and it set him back rather than moving him forward.  All he felt was a buildup of pressure and anxiety – the last thing he needed.

I haven’t written that much about RSA because so much of our experience has been on the DDA side.  I’ve heard testimony and had conversations with any number of you whose problems with RSA have had more to do with efforts on post-secondary education, but our experience suggests the problems are at least as acute when someone needs to get a toehold on the first rung of competitive employment.  Not everyone is suited to RSA’s current “off the shelf” employment options for people with disabilities.  Finding the right option, especially for a young person at the cusp of adulthood, requires some real coordination between DDA and RSA, some creativity in developing an interest into a real job option – and the ability to communicate with the person being served not in the way the bureaucracy dictates, but in the way that works for them.  

DDS Director Nuss Responds

After my last post I was asked by a reader what could be done to help strengthen and retain quality providers.  I posed that question to DDS and received a lengthy response from the director.  Surprised by the comprehensiveness of her message, I asked if I could quote her in my blog, which she agreed to.  So here it is (her words in italics):

I fully support your sentiment that we all need to demand high quality services from those who provide supports to our DC residents with intellectual disabilities.  It has to be something everyone embraces and that is always the hard part as you know.  We first have had the task of trying to raise expectations and providing training and education to our staff, providers and stakeholders about what “good services” actually means and looks like.  For D.C. that meant more than a clean home, food to eat and compassionate care.  Initially when I got here I think people were happy to gain that.  For the last eight years we have transformed our service system to one that at least expects and requires in rules and consequences that supportive and habilitative services be delivered, good healthcare be coordinated and maintained and health and safety be protected.  In the last two years we have immersed our staff in what Person-Centered Thinking really means, what our role is to advance rights, self-advocacy, choice and meaningful community inclusion.  And of course the Family Support Community of Practice has opened our ears and solidified our commitment to real stakeholder engagement and leadership by families and people we support to really shape the system of the future- today.

But despite this progress, the day to day reality for someone is only as good as the staff and organization is that provides the supports and services; and good outcomes only achieved when the people we support, family members, government personnel, community members and the provider agencies all demand, each and every day, that higher expectations are understood and valued, are capable of being delivered, and conversely low expectations are rejected in a loud, clear and consistent voice.  If we all worked each day to make that day an everyday, then we would feel confident that the good providers would grow, others would come and stay and those who don’t embrace the values and have the capacity to manage to those values would truly wither and die on the vine. 

As always, thank you for your advocacy.  I am confident D.C. will continue to demonstrate progress and its firm commitment to becoming a better, person-centered, inclusive and outcome orientated system of services and supports each day.

I don’t know if this makes me feel any better about the unintended transition to a new provider that we’re experiencing, but in general I agree with her that continued improvement will take effort from all of us, on a lot of fronts, and there’s still a long road ahead.  On Tuesday I’ll reach the one-year mark for my blog, and I’m sticking with it.  I hope to find you on the road with me.

Sometimes It's Personal

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I stay away from personal specifics concerning my son.  Sometimes, though, our particular experiences with DDS or provider agencies can help illustrate the challenges that may face families even once a person is receiving support.  This is one of those times.

I’ve written in very positive terms about the provider agency that’s been supporting my son in his home since June of last year.  I had heard about their work in Pennsylvania and was glad they were coming to D.C.  Selecting them not only felt right for our son, but also like a positive step in helping DDA (the arm of DDS that administers the Medicaid waiver for persons with intellectual disabilities) to attract new provider organizations.  And while no agency is going to deliver 100% satisfaction, our son has seemed well satisfied and our family has had a very cooperative relationship with them based on shared values and a common vision for his future.

Two weeks ago we were hit in the face with the news that they were going to have to leave D.C., effective September 1.  Throughout the past year we had heard that referrals were going much more slowly than they had originally expected.  To a significant extent, this has been due to the fact that agencies with a poor record of support in D.C. have been fighting efforts to close them down, leaving often-vulnerable individuals in their care while the process plays out.  Our agency was ready, willing and able to receive a good number of those people, but time ran out.  The high degree of professionalism they brought with them, involving a great deal of mandatory training and standards for staff that went beyond DDA requirements, also required a level of budgetary outlays that they could not sustain if DDA was not referring new people to them.  So off they go.

We had known the news for ten days before we received official notification from DDA.  Even our service coordinator learned the news through the grapevine a week before his management communicated it.  Needless to say, it’s been a rough two weeks, and foremost in our minds is ensuring that our son, his roommate and others who have received such a high standard of service will not now be left high and dry. 

We’ve been assured of a smooth transition to another provider agency that hasn’t been working in D.C. for much longer than ours had.  We know little about the new organization, and so we remain apprehensive.  Time is very short, and we have to hope for the best.  The outgoing agency, the incoming agency, and DDA all have told us that existing local staff will remain in place.  Based on this, we’re providing our son all the reassurance we can that there won’t be disruption in his life.  Abruptly shifting to another provider at this stage would, we fear, only create the disruption we so much want to avoid.

Besides personal concerns, though, I think about what this means for efforts to ensure all providers in D.C. operate responsibly and professionally, and to see that D.C. is a welcoming jurisdiction for providers coming in from out of state.  Put simply, the D.C. provider community is too much of a “closed shop,” and those of us who care need to push to make sure everyone knows we have high expectations which must be met.  D.C.’s citizens with intellectual disabilities deserve no less.