Self-Direction, Episode II

In which Regional Centers and vendors are predicted to decline in importance as a result of SD.

First of all, I expect to remain in business and well-fed. The decline in importance probably won't be drastic and in most cases is likely to focus much of the system more on core mission. Overall, it's hard to predict whether shrinking budgets and costs will balance out in favor of, or to the detriment of the agency.

I think it's safe to assume that vendors will shrink as a proportion of the whole. Regional Centers will have to as well to make the whole reform work. The benefit from this change is, many clients receive professional assistance from vendors because there are no natural resources in the community able to provide needed help for free. Clients are able to employ unvendored, unlicensed alternatives for support that requires little training, oversight or infrastructure. This can remove lower-value activities from the responsibilities of vendors to provide and regional centers to monitor.

Please note that some of the savings will come from a reduction in the need for source documentation and process-focused quality assurance. I'm trusting that the reduced need for these types of scrutiny will result in a reduction in them. If not, it will be an unnecessary missed opportunity to improve the system both in terms of quality of benefit and cost. Plus, the people who think I'm preposterously gullible will have been right again.

A final note on shrinking service providers- and I think I am hopelessly naive here, in order to sustain the best of what the system has to offer, I think it would be a good idea to reduce pressures on rates and the POS and Operations budgets of Regional Centers by reducing agency funding by more than half but less than all of the realized savings. The high-value activities that agencies will continue to manifest have been underfunded for a long time and can have greater impact through more robust funding.