When Charles Brown first called The Harris Center to get treatment for his autistic son,...
A stack of books, including several about caring for rabbits, sits in Chase Brown's room in his home south of Spring Branch. Chase has autism and is one of tens of thousands of Texans unable to get care for their intellectual or developmental disabilities because of insufficient funding from the state.Chase was 3 when his preschool teachers began noticing some of the tell-tale signs of a developmental disability.
Texas has six Medicaid waiver programs for people with disabilities, which allow the state to use a combination of state and Medicaid funds for services to keep residents living in the community instead of in hospitals, state supported living centers or nursing homes. The Browns didn’t know about these programs when Chase was growing up. He was getting the help he needed between therapy and school.
This program “allows HHSC to provide waiver-like services to eligible individuals who are enrolled in regular Medicaid, including those who may be on an interest list,” HHSC’s Weldon said in a statement. “Community First Choice offers personal assistance services, habilitation and emergency response services to eligible individuals.”
Rep. James Frank, chairman of the House Human Services Committee, told the Houston Chronicle he wants the state to be more proactive, and is trying to push officials toward an approach like that adopted in Louisiana. An endeavor like this would likely be difficult in Texas, where the waitlist for services is 17 times longer than what Louisiana was facing when it revamped its system.
In a statement, Weldon said the state “will continue to assess a person’s eligibility for a waiver program only once the individual is released from the interest list.” Seventy percent of people with intellectual or developmental disabilities live with their family, the plan continued, and 20 percent of the caregivers are 60 or older.
But for the most part, his parents’ arrangement felt doable — for a time. But every year, they were told to wait longer. The rehabilitation process was brutal. Lisa felt that if Chase were getting services from the state, someone would be assigned to check on him. Someone might have found him earlier.
She felt as if she was balancing on a skinny limb at the top of a very tall tree. One misstep and she and Chase would come tumbling down. Jacob Ulczynski, the council’s senior director of intellectual and developmental disability services, said clients can sometimes get one type of care, such as evaluation, but be waiting for another, such as respite care.“The Legislature has not dedicated additional funding since that time significantly into the system,” he said. “It’s certainly a struggle and a balance.”
But Lisa didn’t know about the safety net services available to Chase — she’s not even sure he’s on that waiting list. An open bible sits next to Chase Brown’s computer in his room, Thursday, June 23, 2022, in Houston. Brown spends a lot of time studying the Bible and is interested in becoming a minister. Chase’s bible is so dog-eared, the pages so riffled through, it looks like it was submerged in water.
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