In addition to continuing to develop and refine facilitation materials, facilitator training and develop capacity-building resources for supporters, SDMNY was funded to design and pilot a facilitation service delivery system that could be scaled up to serve everyone in NY who wants SDM facilitation.
The key components of the model we are testing assume:
- Families will be increasingly incentivized to seek facilitation because of the SDMA legislation and greater awareness of SDM as a less restrictive alternative to guardianship
- Facilitators will come from, and be compensated through a variety of sources, including:
- provider agencies, (where facilitation will be reimbursed through Medicaid HCBS waiver funds)
- the private bar, (where attorneys who do advance planning and guardianship petitions will be able to offer SDM, including facilitation as an alternative to guardianship for those for whom it is appropriate, and charge clients for that facilitation)
- educational institutions with graduate professional (MSW, OTA, etc.) programs (where students will be compensated with academic [fieldwork] credit),
- pure volunteers (from faith-based organizations, etc.)
To ensure consistency, quality, accountability and transparency, a central entity, the Facilitation Training, Resource and Education Center (FTREC) will provide all facilitator training and facilitation materials and mentor all facilitators (whatever the source) by experienced facilitators employed and supervised by the FTREC.
SDMNY is restructuring to pilot the FTREC with the assistance of high quality, ongoing Quality Improvement (QI) evaluation that will include determining appropriate, and fiscally viable staffing ratios. The goal is to create and test a “turn key” model that can be scaled up to meet the needs of everyone who wants facilitation, and that, at the end of the grant, OPWDD could bid out to entities interested in becoming the FTREC.