State Supported Living Centers (SSLC) are an increasingly inefficient and ineffective system of care for those with intellectual disability and/or developmental disabilities (ID/DD). The current state-run, institutional system is a Medicaid-funded program that suffers from higher provider rates, but lower quality of care than privatelyrun community-based facilities. While the regulating agency, the Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS), has made tremendous progress in moving individuals from SSLCs to community care, consolidation of the facilities has yet to occur in Texas. The resulting lower census per facility has increased costs per resident and the aging structures require high maintenance costs. Overall, the SSLC system is failing financially and failing their patients.
Don’t Fence Me In: Lianne’s Story
Family, then finances—and opportunity. Those are what brought Lianne Halpern back to tiny Shamrock, a small, dusty stop on the famous Route 66 in the Texas panhandle. Like generations of Americans before, Lianne and her family had traveled west along that route in search of the golden promises of California. Lianne’s father worked in the...