National Resource Center for
Participant-Directed Services
Mission
- To infuse participant-directed options into all home- and community-based services by providing national leadership, technical assistance, education, and research, leading to improvement in the lives of individuals of all ages with disabilities.
- To foster the development of inclusive communities that recognize and value the roles of older people and persons with disabilities.
Objectives
- To provide resources and technical assistance that help to develop, refine, and improve participant-directed programs across the country.
- To identify, demonstrate, and evaluate innovative and promising approaches for delivering supportive services to older adults and persons with disabilities.
- To synthesize and share key insights and research findings with policy-makers and relevant others.
- To advocate systems changes that emphasize consumer direction and empowerment and inclusive communities.
The Center seeks to improve the quality of support and services for persons with disabilities through participant direction and foster the development of inclusive communities that recognize and value the roles of older people and persons with disabilities. The NRCPDS is led by Director Kevin Mahoney, GSSW Professor.
View NRCPDS training, information, research and resource options.
Current Projects
National Resource Center for Participant-Directed Services
Building off the Success of the Cash & Counseling project, this technical assistance, training, and research center gives organizations the tools they need to implement a wide variety of consumer-directed programs. The National Resource Center for Participant-Directed Services is the only national resource of its kind focused on supporting states and other organizations, regardless of funding source, that want to offer—or are already offering—consumer-directed services to people of all ages with disabilities.
Recent and upcoming products that fall under the umbrella of our Center:
- "Self-Direction Programs and Policies: A Handbook"
- "Participant Direction During Difficult Budget Times: A Toolkit for State Policymakers and Advocates"
- National Inventory existing participant-directed programs
HCBS.org, the Clearinghouse for Home and Community Based Services
The HCBS.org Clearinghouse promotes the development and expansion of home and community- based services (HCBS) for people of all ages who depend on these supports to live in their homes and to participate fully in community life. The website provides timely access to information, tools, data, and state-produced resources on best practices for program developers, policy makers, researchers, funding organizations, advocacy groups, and others engaged in systems change. By facilitating information sharing, the HCBS Clearinghouse minimizes duplicative effort and ensures that the time and money invested in HCBS yield maximum results for consumers of long-term care services.
HCBS.org provides the following key project activities and features:
- Highlight and New & Notable features important news and the latest reports
- State-by-State Interactive Map allows users to toggle between states
- Theme Pages presents in-depth information on specialized areas of interest
- Event Calendar lists meetings, teleconferences and webinars
- Glossary/Acronyms helps users understand terms and common abbreviations
- Submit Your Resource provides the opportunity for users to contribute documents
- e-CLIPS delivers the latest documents to users' inboxes on a bi-weekly basis
- My Library archives users' favorite reference materials for later use.
- Robust Search Engine scans database by suggested keywords and user defined terms
- Facet Browse Function filters resources by Topic, Type/Tool, Source, and/or State
We invite you to visit the HCBS.org Clearinghouse at www.hcbs.org and explore the resources, data, and reports.
