Description: This presentation will provide tips, resources, and streamlined methods for accessing needed care for you, your child and or loved one. Covered in this will be criteria for needed care, rights of individuals with disabilities, and how to get and maintain medically necessary services that support all individuals to have full access to their community. Attendees will be provided with key resources and have the ability to ask questions for a robust discussion of barriers often experienced, particularly as they pertain to staff shortages that often impact or result in costly and unwanted moves to more restrictive settings.
Trainer: Kirby L Morrow, MSW, Certified Health Advocate, QP MH/IDD, Advocate Disability Rights NC
Kirby Morrow currently works on the Medicaid Team specializing in home and community based services. She has had a rich and diverse career path, which contributes to her understanding of systems and strong clinical and advocacy skills. Kirby earned her BSW in 1995 at Western Carolina University and MSW as an Advanced Standing Student in 2000 at Florida International University. She has worked with teenage girls with substance abuse and eating disorders; with severely persistently mentally ill adults as lead therapist in a partial hospital program; and with the “hardest to serve” children in the foster care system, as part of a pilot program in California, helping place them in permanent homes or back with their families with intensive supports. She has worked with multiple homeless housing programs as clinical director in Florida, where she moved to help her own family; and while there, she wrote over two million dollars in grants, helped start the first permanent housing program in Dade County, and represented South Dade as a member of the Homeless Trust Board. Kirby has also served mentally ill adults and children as clinical director of several programs in North Carolina; as a direct practitioner with the Autism Society of NC and the Children’s Home Society (the agency that adopted her to her own family) as a post-adoption specialist; and as an advocate on complex needs litigation with Disability Rights North Carolina.
Kirby feels honored to have been serving these multiple communities during her career, and is devoted to fighting alongside people who have been disenfranchised, discriminated against, and vulnerable so they can have a voice, equal opportunities, rights and choices. She feels that the greatest gift is knowing you helped one person achieve their goals; that one person matters, and that one person can change the world!
Learning Objectives:
By end of the program, participants will be able to:
- Name and describe at least two facets of managed care and accessing needed care across the state.
- Engage in at least one strategy to advocate for the support and rights of loved ones who are unable to advocate for themselves.
- Identify at least two barriers to care and at least one method for addressing these barriers.
Resources: (In Learning Portal)
- Current LME/MCO Map
- Functional Limitations As Defined By The Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 2000, Attachment B or NC Medicaid Medicaid and Health Choice Intermediate Care Facilities for Clinical Coverage Policy No: 8E Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (ICF/IID) Amended Date: March 15, 2019 19C5 see full document here
- NC Medicaid Fact Sheet Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment
- What to Do When You Can’t Find a Provider, by Disability Rights NC, March 24, 2022
References:
- Iezzoni, L. I., McKee, M. M., Meade, M. A., Morris, M. A., & Pendo, E. (2022). Overview have almost fifty years of disability civil rights laws achieved equitable care? Health Affairs, 41(10), 1371-1378. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2022.00413
- MacNeill, L., Doucet, S., & Luke, A. (2022). Caregiver experiences with transitions from pediatric to adult healthcare for children with complex care needs. Child Care, Health & Development, 48(5), 800-808. https://doi.org/10.1111/cch.12989
- Zhu, J. M., Rowland, R., Gunn, R., Gollust, S., & Grande, D. T. (2021). Engaging consumers in Medicaid program design: Strategies from the states. The Milbank Quarterly, 99(1), 99-125. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12492