Happy Halloween!

It is the spooky season in more than one way here at New Hope!

As you can see from all the fun pictures from yesterday’s New Hope Fall Festival, we love Halloween here at New Hope! We had a great party yesterday, thank you to our sponsors Joshua and Paige Larsen, Kiwanis Club of Northwest Indiana, Thrivent, 360 photo, Dominos, Meijer, Crumbl and Crave cookies. Thank you so much to all of our volunteers who helped decorate, serve food, dance with individuals served and so much more! With over 300 people at the party, we could not have done it without our great volunteers!

Also spooky are the impending changes to the Medicaid wavier program. As I have mentioned in the past, we have been anticipating these changes/cuts for some time now. The first cuts will happen at the end of this year and will limit the hours available to individuals for music, recreation and behavior therapies. Music and recreation therapies will be limited to six (6) hours per month and Behavior therapy will be limited to twelve (12) hours per month. The State is also already denying Short Term Budget Requests (STBR). A STBR is used by New Hope when someone leaves a wavier home for any short or long-term reason, New Hope will apply for a STBR to make up the waiver hours that are missing from the home. If these hours are no longer available, you can imagine the issues this will cause

In addition to these imminent cuts, this week the State announced the following changes under the theme of “Right people, right services, right time”.

• Review of large CIH plans on the waiver
• Waiver reset = Support need budget and reduction of overall average cost by 5%
• Level of Care/eligibility modernization = Ensure those in need are accessing appropriate services – Change from the ALGO level of care to a new tool called Inter RAI in 2026.
• Case management restructure

New Hope continues to be committed to provide the highest quality and most comprehensive care possible to the individuals we serve. We are actively working on contingency plans for these spooky scenarios in order to further our mission and vision. If you would be interested in a zoom call for a full briefing on these changes, drop me a line at awharry@newhopeofindiana.org

Stay safe tonight,

Allison