Medicaid's Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) waivers.

In my state one of the Medicaid programs (which I use) is called the Alternative Care Program.

They’ve been a life saver for me in that it allows me to continue to work. My DH could not attend an adult day program as he is 100% immobile.

I hope this works out for you.

We live in California. My DW is on Medi-Cal now and I applied and got the spousal impoverishment waiver which doesn’t count any of my income towards her getting approved for Medi-Cal. Unfortunately with just her SSDI she still has a SOC (share of cost ) of over $1600. What this means for HCBS, the first $1600 comes out of our pockets. This is why we don’t have HCBS. If your LO is on Medicaid and has no SOC then HCBSis a great program to be on.

I went through the process of applying for the HCBS waiver in Florida. They did a phone evaluation first, asking questions about all the ADLs, and you rated 1-5 whether your LO could perform them, then whether they had the help to perform them. There were also questions about you as a caregiver and how much stress you were under, etc. Don’t sugar coat it - tell it like it is. Once that was done they assigned a priority ranking for the wait list - the higher the ranking, the more quickly you could get benefits when the money was available. My DH could not perform any of the ADLs without help and he went straight to the top of the list. The next step was a quick in person evaluation that basically verified that he needed the help. Then you actually apply for the waiver with all the accompanying financial paperwork. It was complicated but the Area Agency on Aging was very helpful in explaining the next steps. Good luck! It’s a great help if you get approved.

I might add to my previous comment that by the time I applied for the HCBS waiver program, he was already in memory care. They would have paid a portion of the facility I chose but depending on the facility they would pay more or less than the amount we would have gotten. They would pay more for nursing home but I wanted him in a stand alone memory care facility.

Georgia