[NFBWV-Talk] Fwd: [NFB-Legislative-Directors] Medicaid Pre-Vocational Funding

[Sheri Koch]

This is interesting. 

Sheri Koch, President
National Federation of the Blind of West Virginia
304-993-5103



Begin forwarded message:

> From: Justin Salisbury via NFB-Legislative-Directors <nfb-legislative-directors at nfbnet.org>
> Date: August 16, 2019 at 2:19:08 PM EDT
> To: NFB Legislative Directors List <nfb-legislative-directors at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Justin Salisbury <PRESIDENT at alumni.ecu.edu>
> Subject: [NFB-Legislative-Directors] Medicaid Pre-Vocational Funding
> Reply-To: NFB Legislative Directors List <nfb-legislative-directors at nfbnet.org>
> 
> Aloha Colleagues,
>  
> As we have been continuing to fight to end the payment of subminimum wages and transition away from sheltered workshops, we sometimes talk about how Medicaid pays them for providing pre-vocational services, which basically means that they’re giving the workers somewhere to go for many hours per day.
>  
> Additionally, a lot of state VR agencies have gone into Order of Selection processes, which, in some cases, have completely put a tourniquet on the entry process for adjustment to blindness training.
>  
> If there were a way that we could get adjustment to blindness training funded as a pre-vocational service, perhaps we could protect it from Order of Selection processes. As our training centers will quickly tell you, it is a pre-vocational training program because it prepares people to eventually go onto vocational training wherever sighted people get vocational training for that profession.
>  
> Have we ever looked at trying to use those Medicaid dollars for pre-vocational services to fund adjustment to blindness training?
>  
> I am aware that we would have to be careful of getting pulled into a medical model of dealing with rehabilitation. Perhaps there could be some other way that we could insulate our adjustment to blindness training programs from VR Order of Selection processes, such as setting up a separate stream of funding just for that.
>  
> Mahalo,
>  
> Justin
>  
>  
> Justin M. Hideaki Salisbury
> he/him/his
>  
> Board Member | National Association of Blind Students
>    A proud division of the National Federation of the Blind
> (808) 797-8606
> president at alumni.ecu.edu | www.nabslink.org
>  
>  
>  
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