Doreen Cummings is the Director of Services for Mainstay Supportive Housing. This series explores different topics related to finding the right supportive housing for your loved one with intellectual or developmental disabilities. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why is Mainstay supportive housing a viable option for families with disabled adults who live outside of Massachusetts?
We are able to help families move from any state to Massachusetts, and we help families access all of the benefits, just like someone who has lived here their whole life. So, it is a very viable option. In the past, we have moved folks from New Mexico; we moved somebody just recently from Colorado and from North Carolina. Those are our most recent moves. It is a little bit more complicated and there are a few more steps, obviously, as you’re accessing the Commonwealth’s benefits. But Mainstay is definitely in a position to help you access all of those benefits one step at a time.
What’s important for families from outside Massachusetts to know about Mainstay’s supportive housing?
We’re a really unique model; it is unique in the United States. We have a specific benefit that covers staffing, through MassHealth, and that benefit is called Group Adult Foster Care. That’s a $1,300-a-month benefit that is again, only in Massachusetts. This benefit provides daily staffing to each resident. And without that $1,300 savings, it can be a deal breaker for families to be able to private pay for the other services that they need. It is the one particular benefit really makes us stand out from other states. It actually was one of the reasons why we started this model in the first place in 2010, knowing that this could be one of the legs of the table, and it would really give families the option to cover the costs.
Talk to us about how out-of-state families can tap into the funding mechanism so that it can further reduce the out-of-pocket expenses.
Yes. Like many benefits that you’re tapping into no matter where you live – Social Security, health insurance, Section 8 housing vouchers – we can easily tap into those benefits here in Massachusetts as well. People are tapping into Social Security no matter where they live. They’re also tapping into, hopefully, getting on the Section 8 waiting list. If someone has a Section 8, you can bring that voucher to Massachusetts and use it here in one of our houses. Other benefits we can help you get is the MassHealth health insurance, through which you can access the staffing benefit—the Group Adult Foster Care. We would help you get the RIDE, which is the door-to-door group public transportation system here in Massachusetts that helps people get to and from work, to and from their families’ homes, to and from recreational activities. We would help folks access the state Department of Developmental Services program, or the Mass Rehab program, whichever umbrella you fall under, and that would help with day services and job placements. We have all those connections that we’re really able to connect families to.
We have this really grand community of families and parents and other residents who are here ready to embrace new residents as they come in from out-of-state and to help them find a doctor that’s local, or help them find a dentist, even help with job referrals so that they can find a job within the local area.
And so, the person who’s moving from out-of-state merely needs to set up residence in Massachusetts before they can tap into those benefits?
Yes. We are very generous in that category. Often, we will let someone move into one of our homes and then start accessing some of those benefits where you have to have residency. We’ve actually “scholarshipped” families for the first month with regard to the family care program until MassHealth is secured and then we can do that intake for MassHealth. So again, we’re very generous working with families as they try to check off all the boxes. It is a very front-loaded process, but once you get all the services in place, you will be all set.
Can you talk about the steps that families should take if they’re serious about thinking about supportive housing in Massachusetts?
One of the first steps is to contact me so that we can have a phone conversation. We do monthly Open House Zoom meetings, where we talk with a lot of different families about the program and the model, how we came about to open it, what the budget looks like, so we go over all the numbers, we go over the pictures of the houses. If you happen to be within New England, and you want to come down to see one of the houses in person, we would set up a tour, or you could come to a scheduled open house. I’m very much a part of that process and hand-holding families throughout each step. We have a really great cheat sheet that we share with all the families to walk them through all the steps and we’ve been really successful with many of our folks to bring them from out-of-state into Massachusetts, into this one-of-a-kind, unique model.
To learn more, you can contact Doreen directly at Doreen.Cummings@mainstayliving.org.
