No, in each state, the state has to allocate so much funding. It isn’t cheap either. As living in a state worse than Florida, we have one of the lowest allocated funding, at $135k a year, when a spot is opened.. Usually the state is setting aside 100 new spots a year, over top of the already open spots that happen when someone dies (which is really rare).. There are more people on the waitlist (over 3k individuals) than currently receive them in my state..
They also go by county, on how many spots get opened. Like our county, got 10 spots last year. There is over 200 on the waitlist.. My county has a 7-10 year wait. The county next door, has a 13.8 year wait...
The only way to have the list shortened, is for our state government to push millions into the health systems. This happened many, many years ago, and cleared the wait lists in many states. The problem, as soon as they closed it, within the next year, they had waitlists years long again..
The worst part, if you move states, it doesn’t move.. You have to start again..
There are some states, a very short handful, that do not have waitlists but they are mostly in higher than average, cost of living too (ie NY and NJ)..
Now, there is 2 ways to get your child or adult moved up the waiver list. In a child, that have to be deemed a danger to themselves and others in their community.This takes police, fire or EMT reports, showing that they need more help than a parent can give.Example: when my son decided since I was to busy to help him cook frozen cinnamonbread sticks, he decided to get his sister to help. Together, they read the wrong directions. Instead of microwaving them for 1min 15secs, they cooked them for 4mins and right when the buzzer went off, the plate was on fire, shatter and smoke came out of my mircowave. I was told that I should have called the fire Dept, had a report done and they would have taken that as a need to move them up on the list.. Lord forbid that I needed 10 minutes to go over lab results with a specialist..)
Okay, anyways, the only other way, is to apply for an emergency slot for services. The only way our state allows for an emergency slot, is 1, a medical fragile/ill child is aging out of their medical waiver and needs to move to this waiver (our medical fragile/ill doesn’t go past 20 years of age) OR the individual that is reaponsible for the individual, is no longer able to care for them.. Sadly, in our area, they are seeing this more and more. We have a lot of 40-50-60 year olds that are applying for emergency slots because their elderly parents, that are 60-70-80-90 years old, are needing to be placed in nurisng homes and can no longer take care of them. Most of these individuals have never been to school, nor can function but they have to go somewhere.. Doctors are having to wait to place the elderly into nursing homes, until they can get them emergency slots. Our state usually only gives 25 slots for the whole state too.. It creates a mess, when the elderly person dies and the IDD/Autism individual is still waiting for an emergency slot..
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