In February, I stepped into a new role. Or, in someways a paid role of many of the things I was already doing. Here’s the deets as published on TennesseeWorks’s blog:
What if, similar to the training families can receive about special education advocacy and the Individuals with Disabilities with Education Act, those with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their family members could receive training in advocacy about long term supports and services and Tennessee’s Medicaid waiver programs? What if training for effective leadership were offered to help provide greater feedback for quality improvement in the new Employment and Community First CHOICES waiver program? Or training to be able to better serve on special needs health care advisory councils to affect change?
From left to right: West Region Organizer Leslie Pierini Jones, Middle Region Organizer Leisa Hammett and East Region Organizer Sara Scott attended a workshop recently in South Carolina to learn additional skills for engaging families of special health care needs consumers in systems-level change.
Welcome to Family Voices of Tennessee’s Voices4Choices. Family Voices of Tennessee is a part of the Tennessee Disability Coalition, which was awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Consumer Advocacy for Transformation grant. This funding enables Family Voices and the Tennessee Disability Coalition to enhance input into Tennessee’s evolving ECF CHOICES program. ECF CHOICES serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and Voices4Choices is seeking input of “consumers,” defined as those who have applied and/or are receiving services, their families and their conservators. The two-year Voices4Choices project will provide training and support for ECF members, family members and conservator to serve on advisory councils created by TennCare and the managed care organizations (the MCOs-BlueCare, United Health and Amerigroup).
You can read the rest of this post here.
Fingers crossed, I’ll be getting back to more writing here. My creative spirit is missing it. Meanwhile, I am creating some of my own art. Be sure to follow both Grace and I on Instagram! You can also click our feeds at the bottom of the blog here.
