Developing and Implementing Self-Direction Programs and Policies: A Handbook

Publication Date: April 2009

Publisher: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Author(s):

Research Area: Health

Type: Report

Abstract:

Increasingly, states are implementing home and community service delivery models that provide options for individuals and their families to direct and manage their own services and supports. These models are called self-direction and are also referred to as “consumer direction” and “participant direction” when referring to specific programs. Developing and Implementing Self-Direction Programs and Policies: A Handbook uses the terms self-direction and participant direction unless referring to programs that use other terms.

Over the last decade the amount of information about self-direction has increased enormously. For states that want to start or expand a self-direction program, finding the exact information they need can be a time-consuming, challenging, and not always successful process. This handbook was developed to provide state staff, policy-makers, service providers, program participants, and other stakeholders with a single comprehensive source of information about self-direction programs and policies.

Its primary purpose is to explain how states can increase program participants’ choice of and control over their services and supports. The handbook will be a useful tool for all those working to expand self-direction options in programs already providing home and community services and supports, and to develop new self-direction programs.