On September 6^th, I attended the virtual question and answer session held by the Arizona AHCCCS Administration to address additional changes they had made based on parent feedback to the CMS 1115 waiver proposal. As a parent, I personally want to express my appreciation and gratitude that our voices were heard, considered, and that modifications were made to the waiver allowing for the continuation of parents as the paid habilitative therapist.

As a parent of an individual who has definitely benefited from this program (and the skills he has gained benefit everyone who works with him both now and in the future), I was pleased to hear that parents will still be able to act as a hab therapist to their child both if one cannot be found and/or the family/disabled loved one feel that is the best solution for their circumstances regardless. I was also happy to hear that CMS has provided guidance that the current provisions can continue until the current waiver process is completed even if it passes the November 11^th deadline. This prevents disruptions in services which is the most desirable outcome in my opinion for anyone needing these supports.

Part of the proposal does call for a process where parents are required to demonstrate competency in meeting the therapeutic goals. As I understood it, some policy points as regards to the implementation of this are still to be determined and there will be upcoming stakeholder meetings to solidify this process.

As a parent, my every hope is to participate in that. As I mentioned last week, a person does not have to have any experience working with the developmentally disabled or any training in basic therapeutic techniques to be a hab therapist in Arizona. We had one individual who worked briefly with our family that had never worked with the developmentally disabled, knew nothing about what to expect with the conditions, knew nothing about how to implement or work on his goals, and knew nothing about therapeutic technique.

The company she was coming from did not provide any training on these matters either as it wasn’t required of them. I did all of her training, all of the teaching about what to expect for an individual with Autism, etc. The company did not provide a field trainer to work with her. Whitney was the only hab therapist to work with us that wasn’t given training in his programming and or what to expect from his conditions by me personally. Based on this and other experiences, I personally would hope that a proposal could be implemented that would require any habilitative therapist, whether they were a parent or no relation whatsoever to the individual needing services, to demonstrate basic understanding of competencies and therapy techniques needed.

I remain very busy working as both my son’s one-to-one aid as part of his school transition and as his hab therapist, so I think I will wrap my thoughts up so I can get to my next “to do” item. As I watch Tony move into this new environment, I am confident that having the flexibility for me to be his hab therapist helped our son gain the skills necessary for him to transition into the public school system. His team there has been lovely to work with, and they have had such positive feedback within the past week to give me about how they think he’s doing and that has been soul-deep joyful to watch and to experience with him.

We are now there for an hour and a half each day, with him attending both a general education home room and working on getting used to his specials rotation. I personally am thankful I can continue to provide him with this support as his habilitative therapist as long as it is necessary for me to do so and would like to officially end on a note of gratitude and appreciation to the Arizona AHCCCS Administration for hearing the voices of the parents and modifying the waiver proposal that was submitted to CMS.