EIDBI advisory group meeting notes

Location: Minnesota Department of Human Services, Webex only

Date: Aug. 6, 2021

Opening, including agenda review

The group introduced themselves and responded to a question, “What is new about ASD in your world?” Comments included:

· Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) representative: We are meeting students where they are. We work with more placement people and job coaches to help students stay in the work they find.

· Evaluation provider: We are working on a plan to hire more providers to meet the need for referrals.

· Speech and language pathologist (SLP): We are taking a pro-neurodiversity approach in the SLP role.

· EIDBI provider: We are receiving a large increase in calls from families needing services; it is challenging to keep up with the needs.

· Parent of a young adult with ASD: We are parenting a transition age youth with ASD.

· EIDBI provider: We are expanding services to serve transition age youth.

· Disability Law Center representative: We educate clients and families around their rights to the benefit. We find we need to push county and state staff to know who the providers are and increase the number of providers to meet the need.

· MDE: We are transitioning kids back to school with COVID, and planning for what that will look like.

· EIDBI provider and Native American representative: We are focusing on what the transition to school in the fall will look like and dealing with concerns around the increase in COVID cases again.

· MACSSA representative: We are working through staffing shortages, and difficulties of families accessing consumer-directed care services because of the staff shortages.

· Parent of a child with ASD in greater Minnesota: We are getting an EIDBI provider coming to the community this fall. We have transferred kids out of local public school and moved to a new school because of concerns about the public school. We are also helping to educate teachers on services and supports for kids.

· Special education director: We are engaged in back-to-school planning, looking at the needs of students with special needs. We see increased enrollment of children with ASD, and we are determining how to support those needs.

· Advocate: We are working with families to help them through the MnCHOICES assessment process to get access to services they need.

· Parent who supports other parents: We are hearing concerns about mental health from parents and how to support their children.

DHS updates

· Provider numbers continue to increase. There are now more than 150 provider agencies and 228 individual CMDE (assessment) providers enrolled.

· Recipient growth continues to be significant, with 30 percent or more growth each month of the last quarter.

· Average age of EIDBI recipients: The average age of EIDBI recipients is 7 while the average age of participants with ASD diagnosis on MA is 12, indicating that EIDBI is supporting younger children.

· The number of children receiving the benefit across Minnesota closely aligns with Minnesota’s population distribution with 58 percent served in the seven-county metro area and 42 percent in greater Minnesota.

· There have been 2,213 total participants since the benefit began in 2016, including 1,050 individual recipients in 2021.

· The children receiving the benefit self-describe as 48 percent white and 52 percent Black, Indigenous or people of color.

· The number of individual EIDBI providers continues to grow along with agencies. The largest level of providers continues to be Level 2; this is the bachelor’s level provider, with 2,376 currently enrolled.

· We reviewed recent EIDBI outreach, including:

o Parent listening sessions

o School collaboration workshop series

o Trauma-informed supports presentations with EIDBI providers

o Better Together assessment training

o Peer-to-peer conference

o Managed care organization ombudsmen meeting

o Help Me Connect webinar

o Pathway to Services webinar

· Upcoming outreach includes:

o Presentation to the Minnesota Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics

o Collaboration Series wrapup

o Meet and greet for EIDBI providers with MCOs

o Podcast for the Center for Inclusive Childcare

· Reviewed enhancements recently made to the comprehensive multi-disciplinary evaluation and individual treatment plans.

Legislative session updates and discussion

· The update began with a history of EIDBI legislation

· Staff discussed legislative items that passed in 2021, including background studies, universal standards and expanded telehealth legislation and how these changes affect EIDBI

· The staff and members discussed 2022 potential legislation focusing on updating and clarifying language that may have been affected by 2021 legislative changes. We discussed ways to increase the number of Native American staff to serve Native children by implementing provider qualifications similar to fluency in another language criteria. We also discussed state plan amendments that update codes and rates for the CMDE, coordinated care conference and the higher intensity intervention.

School collaboration work group update

· Purpose of the workgroup is to improve long-term outcomes and quality of life for children and families by increasing effective collaboration and genuine partnerships across educators and EIDBI providers

· The goals for the series were to:

o Streamline the referral and transition process across EIDBI providers and schools

o Define what it means to provide coordinated and collaborative servicers according to best practice

o Provide a more streamlined assessment and evaluation process for medical diagnosis and educational determination, emphasizing and encouraging early screening, diagnosis and intervention.

· The series was interactive, focusing on collaboration between families, private providers and school districts at times of transition. We reviewed the collaboration materials that are available on the Minnesota Autism Resource Portal. The collaboration series has been recorded for viewing until Sept. 1, 2021, for those who could not attend. The group reviewed the visuals and other resources from the series that we hope will be published. One more series will be held on Aug. 16.

5. Review of EIDBI team goals

· Increase capacity to 6,000 participants by end of 2023

· Increase provider outreach focus on QSPs, CMDE and Level I providers

· Increase services to Native American children from 69 to 100 by July 2022

· Increase the number of children served in northwest Minnesota (Beltrami, Polk, Itasca counties) from two to 30 by 2023

· Increase the number of children served in north-central/western Minnesota (Clay, Becker, Otter Tail counties) from 55 to 100 by 2023

· Increase the number of children served in southwest Minnesota (Lyon, Redwood, Brown Counties) from five to 15 by 2023

· The DHS staff requested that the advisory group reflect on these goals to prepare an activity before the next meeting. DHS team suggested advisory members use the Charting the Life Course tools, in particular, the Trajectory exercise to brainstorm some ideas before the next meeting. As members brainstorm, they should consider:

o What do we want services to look like?

o What don’t we want services to look like?

o What has been working and not working?

o What opportunities can we build on?

Next meeting

Friday, Nov. 5, remote only, from 10 a.m. to noon.