August 31, 2018
We were privileged to take Secretary Carey and Director Lee on a tour of two programs on Thursday afternoon – they visited with staff of a TDT program and a small DD Group Home. They were both engaged and interested – I hope that talking with staff and seeing some of the challenges personally will help in future conversations.
I spent most of the week in Baltimore at the HCBS conference – it was, as always, a whirlwind of activity with exceptional presentations and the opportunity to spend a lot of time with staff from DMAS, DARS and DBHDS. Plus, of course, catch up with old friends and acquaintances who are conference regulars! I did come back with some good ideas and a fair amount of useful information which will be helpful going forward!
The really good news of the week is that the “fast-track” regulations which made some needed, if minor, changes to the Human Right Regulations. These have been in the process since last November and will now be posted in September to be effective November 1! They add “licensed behavior analysts’ to the list of professionals who can write restrictive behavior plans and, more important, limit the requirement for an independent review committee to only those plans involving the use of restrain or time-out. There will be a comment period, but it does not look like there will be any issues!
Happy Labor Day!