HAWAII
Grant Information
- Name of Grantee
- Department of Human Services
- Title of Grant
- Hawaii Real Choices Partnership
- Type of Grant
- Real Choice Systems Change
- Amount of Grant
- $1,350,000
- Year Original Funding Received
- 2001
Contact Information
Aileen Hiramatsu
Division Administrator
DHS
601 Kamokila Blvd., Suite 518
Kakuhihewa, Kapolei State Building
Kapolei, HI 967072021
8086928050
ahiramatsu@medicaid.dhs.state.hi.us
Subcontractor(s)
University of Hawaii
Center on Disability Studies
Robert A. Stodden
8089569199
Target Population(s)
Persons who are aging and those with disabilities who require longterm supports to function in their community of choice.
Goals
- Involve all stakeholder groups and maximize consumer participation in a collaborative systems change process through consumermajority collaborative bodies responsible for developing policies, procedures, and practices.
- Enhance access to longterm care services, promote consumer choice and selfdetermination, and improve service quality by developing and demonstrating a crossagency, crossdisability webbased single entry point (SEP).
- Provide primary/secondary consumers and agency personnel with essential attitudes, skills, and knowledge for achieving increased consumer choice and selfdetermination through use of the webbased SEP.
Activities
- Establish and support a governing council and workgroups with broad stakeholder representation.
- Support the governing council and its workgroups to develop and submit background and language for legislation and program guidelines enabling desired systemic changes.
- Develop and implement a webbased SEP and develop strategies to ensure sufficient and enduring resources to maintain the webbased SEP beyond the end of Hawaii ACCESS Project funding.
- Assess training and technical assistance needs of participating stakeholder groups, and develop and implement technical assistance activities to meet identified needs.
- Conduct ongoing evaluation of effectiveness of training and technical assistance activities.
Abstract
The Hawaii Real Choices Partnership will involve all key stakeholder groups in developing, demonstrating, and institutionalizing one of the nation's first crossagency webbased Single Entry Point (SEP) that will provide consumers with indepth, uptodate information on ALL their available options, including those offered by private as well as public agencies.
This innovative SEP will employ the latest computer networking and web technologies to provide the following consumerfriendly features: an interactive assessment process to help consumers identify services for which they are eligible; a unified database showing all longterm care services offered by the state, counties, and private organizations, with open slots listed according to geographical location; and a quality assurance component that will identify service gaps by tracking service requests and allow consumers to rate the services they receive.
To maximize consumer input into all aspects of the project and promote collaboration and coordination among all stakeholders, a collaborative systems improvement process, as demonstrated to be effective in numerous other systems change efforts, will be implemented. This process will be used to guide the activities of a partnership governing council, which will have directive authority over the project and will establish work groups to address critical topics.
The council and work groups will be chaired by a consumer (coprincipal investigator for the project) and will have at least 51 percent consumer membership (consumer members will include primary consumers, family members or others concerned for their wellbeing, and representatives of consumer and family organizations). Other council members will include the heads of the public and private service providing agencies, including the DHS Director, serving as principal investigator, heads of four DHS divisions, two Department of Health divisions, and the Executive Office on Aging.
The overall objective of the Hawaii ACCESS Project is to design and implement effective and enduring improvements in community longterm support systems for all children and adults with disabilities or longterm illness, reflecting increased access to information, choice, and quality services and supports consistent with their community living preferences and priorities.