By Geralyn Magan
LTSS Center researchers will design a housing plus services model for Connecticut Community Care.
A grant from the John H. and Ethel G. Noble Charitable Trust to LeadingAge Connecticut will help researchers from the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston refine the work that Connecticut Community Care (CCC) is doing to bring onsite services to residents of 3 affordable senior housing communities in Danbury, CT.
The LTSS Center will refine the CCC program with an eye toward possible financing mechanisms that might be available through local health entities and/or state initiatives. This work could benefit or inform other housing plus services programs in the state. LeadingAge Connecticut will work with the project team to help it understand the state’s program and policy landscape.
ABOUT CCC
Established in 1980, CCC is a statewide nonprofit care management organization that helps more than 17,000 individuals of all ages, abilities, and incomes receive the care they need at home, in their own communities.
In a unique twist, CCC decided in 2017 to co-locate 4 of its care coordinators in 3 affordable senior housing communities in Danbury. The care coordinators provide services to CCC clients living in the buildings, and to building residents who are not eligible for CCC-delivered Medicaid Waiver services.
“We’re assisting (these residents) in creating essential connections to benefits and services that they may not know about, but may be eligible for,” says Sherry Ostrout, CCC’s director of government initiatives. “We are screening them for Medicaid, SNAP and other entitlements, and we are helping them enroll in those programs. We are also looking for ways to link them not just to health services, but to enriching kinds of (community) activities that they may be interested in pursuing.”
PROJECT COMPONENTS
LTSS Center researchers will be helping CCC formalize its current operations in the 3 buildings by designing a model that reflects best practices for addressing the health and supportive needs of the vulnerable low-income residents and supporting them to age in their community.
That model has the potential to be scaled in affordable housing communities across Connecticut and other states, says Alisha Sanders, director of housing and services policy research at the LTSS Center.
Over the next year, LTSS Center researchers will:
- Examine CCC’s services and program operations at the 3 housing communities to understand all its current components, how housing community staff work with CCC’s program, and opportunities for CCC to expand resident supports.
- Explore resident needs and identify the types of services and supports that would help meet outcomes of interest.
- Study the health and long-term care services and support landscape in Danbury and statewide to understand potential pathways for sustainable financing for housing-based service models implemented by CCC and others.
- Identify needed changes and additions to CCC’s model that would enhance program operations and would better align with potential financing mechanisms.
- Develop a research plan to evaluate the refined model.
- Explore the interest of other housing organizations in Danbury and across the state in replicating or engaging with the CCC model.
“We will be looking simultaneously at the needs and the interests of the residents, the interest of health systems, the interests and incentives of the potential payers, and the housing community’s interests and resources, and then we’ll try to see how all of that fits together,”says Sanders. “We’ll be tailoring the model to these needs and interests.”
GOALS FOR THE PROJECT
CCC is looking to the LTSS Center to help it improve and formalize a program that is already working well and doing great things. It also wants the center’s help in ensuring that the model aligns with the needs and expectations of health care entities and potential funders.
“(The LTSS Center researchers) will provide us with the kind of feedback we need to polish what we’ve done and maybe completely transform what we’ve done,” says Ostrout. “We are really open to that kind of analysis and evaluation so, at the end of the day, we are doing the best that we possibly can for those who we are aiming to serve, and we are doing it in a way that has some sustainability.”
“Right now, we are doing good things, I know we are doing good things,” adds Ostrout. “But there is no playbook. We want a roadmap.”
Working with CCC could help advance the LTSS Center’s ongoing research by opening up new possibilities for the housing plus services model, says Sanders.
“Having a community organization supporting housing-based services and networking across multiple housing properties is an interesting model to think about,” she says. “Resources are always going to be a challenge, so this may be an efficient way to bring services into more properties, particularly properties where the housing organization may be open to having services but doesn’t want to manage the program, or doesn’t have the resources for it.”
The Connecticut project is also a logical follow-on to the exploration of potential financial mechanisms for housing plus services programs that the LTSS Center conducted last year.
“This project will further the conversation on how we are going to pay for these services so we can expand them to more housing communities and make them more sustainable,” says Sanders.