Successful Community Integration: The Community Resource Center Model

Community Resource Centers (CRCs) are specialty, out-patient clinics situated at existing residential facilities that provide desperately needed quality medical, dental, and other therapeutic services to citizens with mental retardation and developmental disabilities living in communities, who have significant difficulty obtaining these services. CRCs also function as university-based centers of education, training, and research for medical and dental students, residents, externs, fellows, and professionals. There are proven models in several states.

Model State Legislation in Support of Residential Choice

Most states opt, as part of their Medicaid plan, to provide services to some people with MR/DD the option to receive services in Medicaid funded and certified Intermediate Care Facility for Persons with Mental Retardation (ICFs/MR). ICF/MR residents are the neediest, most fragile, and most disabled citizens of in your state. ICFs/MR provide cost effective, comfortable and safe living for them. A vast majority of the families and guardians of ICF/MR residents are very satisfied with the care their loved ones receive.

Yet, the very existence of ICFs/MR is threatened in many states. Often, the decision to downsize or close an ICF/MR is made unilaterally by a State’s Governor or his/her designee (hereafter, “State’s Administration”), without any involvement of the state’s legislature.

The decision to downsize or close an ICFs/MR should not be made unilaterally by a State’s Administration. When an ICF/MR is closed, a state’s most fragile citizens are removed from their long-time home and often separated from life-sustaining specialized services. Furthermore, nearly every state has thousands of people waiting for services. The decision to eliminate any service option must not rest in the hands of one governmental entity.

Some states have addressed this concern with legislation.