Innovations Waiver Services

Day Support @ The Workshop

Day Supports is a group service located on-site aimed at providing the client with assistance with acquisition, retention, or improvement of social and daily living skills. We provide this service as an option for a meaningful, structured day for your loved one. Day supports is in place to support activities during the day that take place away from residential settings. The activities take place in age-appropriate groups selected in accordance with the preferences of the client. Day Supports is centered on promoting independence as well as inclusion with a focus on fostering the individual’s potential to reach and maintain their self-sufficiency, self-determination, and allow them to experience a meaningful day. To guarantee that the client makes an informed choice when choosing activity options, individuals who are 16 and older will receive education on the options available to them during the planning meeting. This education will expose the individual to similar activities that others in the community would typically participate in. Day supports’ structure is designed to give the client the opportunity to explore his or her skills, interests, and talents while out in the community. For school-aged or younger children, Developmental Day is a service which provides individual habilitative programming. It is designed to meet the developmental needs of the child in an inclusive setting to promote skill acquisition in areas such as self-help, fine and gross motor skills, language and communication. This includes cognitive and social skills in order to facilitate their functioning in a less restrictive environment. Day Supports can be provided in individual or group settings.

Community Living and Support

Provides supports in a private home setting as well as during community activity with family and/or friends. Community Living and Supports is a service focused on individuals that assists in facilitating the client’s ability live successfully in his or her own home or in the home shared with his or her family/natural supports. The service is also aimed at enabling the individual to be an active member of his or her community. A trained paraprofessional will help the client to learn new skills as well as support the individual in client-specific activities that are aligned with the client’s preferences. The expected outcome of the service is to increase or maintain the client’s life skills or provide them with the supervision and guidance necessary to empower the individual to live in the home with his/her family or natural supports, maximize his or her self-sufficiency, increase self-determination and enhance the person’s opportunity to experience full membership or inclusion in his/her community. The main goal of Community Living and Support are to help the client to learn new skills and or improve upon the individual’s existing skills. The service focuses on acquisition in the following skill areas: interpersonal, independent living, community living, self-care, and self-determination. The service also focuses on support in the following areas: assistance in monitoring of health, nutritional, or physical conditions, circumstantial supervision, daily living skills, community participation, and interpersonal skills. Another aspect of the service is providing technical assistance to natural supports and family members who live in the home in order to help the client maintain the skills they have learned. This assistance may be requested by the natural support or suggested by the individual Support Planning team and must be a collective decision. The technical assistance is circumstantial to the provision of Community Living and Supports.

Residential Support

This service supports successful living in an Alternative Family Living (AFL) home. This includes skills instruction and is purposed to help an individual maintain learned skills as well as provide supervision. Residential Supports consists of individualized training, assistance, and supervision that includes integration of community activities, skill building and/or physical assistance in areas such as communication, mobility, self-help, independent living, and self-determination.

At times, due to the severity of symptoms or inability of lower levels of care to stabilize the child’s behavioral health condition the individual may need to be to reside in an out-of-home placement for safety and stabilization. The following residential services are available for children and adolescents with more severe behaviors, including sexually aggressive behaviors:

Level I/Family Type: Minimal supports with a primary focus on mentoring and interventions for mildly disruptive behaviors. This level is similar to foster care with a therapeutic parent figure trained in behavioral health in the home. This level typically acts as a step down from level 2 prior to the client returning to his or her natural environment.
Level II/Family Type: This is similar to level II but with a higher intensity of therapeutic intervention and is designed to address more moderate to severe problems. This service may include a specialized form of Level II called Intensive Alternative Family Treatment (IAFT). IAFT specializes in serving youth with particularly severe behavioral problems in an effort to prevent use of more restrictive levels of care. IAFT assigns one child per family and is combined with specialized case management by The Kid’s Workshop including daily contact with foster care parents. The includes also has psychiatric care and specialized crisis management. This service takes place in a group home setting opposed to a family setting.
Level III: This service is in a group home setting with 24/7 awake staff in a non-locked facility. Behaviors of clients placed in this service are expected to be severe. There is constant direct supervision. This service includes a licensed therapist that oversees care and provides therapy directly to individuals at the facility.
Level IV: This service takes place in a structured facility setting with staff present and available at all times of the day, including night supervision with a 2 to six staff to resident ratio. This level of care is usually used in North Carolina.

Community Networking

Community Networking services provide individualized day activities that align with the client’s definition of a meaningful day in an integrated community setting, with persons who are not disabled. This service includes a combination of training, personal assistance and supports as needed by the client during activities. Transportation to/from the client’s residence and the training sites are covered. The service may focus on the development of community-based time management skills, community-based classes for the development of hobbies or leisure/cultural interests, volunteer work, or participation in formal/informal associations and/or community groups. The individual will be able to experience a broad range of community settings that will allow them to make community connections. The end goal is to maximize participation in community life while developing natural supports.

Crisis Services

Crisis Supports provide intervention and stabilization for individuals experiencing a crisis. Crisis Supports are for individuals who experience acute crises and who present a threat to the person’s health and safety or the health and safety of others. Crisis Supports promote prevention of crises as well as assistance in stabilizing the individual when a behavioral crisis occurs. Crisis Supports are immediate interventions available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, to support the individual. The Service includes out-of-home crisis Supports which is for an individual experiencing a crisis who needs some structures support. In addition, crisis consultations are available for individuals that have significant, intensive, or challenging behaviors that have resulted or have the potential to result in a crisis situation. Staff trained in Crisis Services Competencies is available to provide “first response” crisis services to individuals they support, in the event of a crisis. Their role is to assess the nature of the crisis to determine whether the situation can be stabilized in the current location or if a higher-level intervention is needed, determine and contact agencies needed to secure higher level intervention or out-of-home services, provide direction to staff present at the crisis or provide direct intervention to de-escalate behavior or protect others living with the individual during behavioral or medical episodes, contact the care coordinator following the intervention to arrange for a treatment team meeting for the individual and/or provide direction to service providers who may be supporting the individual in other services.