One of Nassau County’s Independent Living Centers has agreed to a partnership with New York State.
The Long Island Center for Independent Living, located in Levittown, is one of 11 centers to join New York State and Public Partnership LLC in a plan to strengthen the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program for home care users. The partnership is expected to go into effect by April 1, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, which released a statement regarding the partnership on Tuesday, Jan. 7.
“Our statewide partnership will protect CDPAP and ensure continued access to high-quality home care for New Yorkers across the state,” she said. “I’m pleased that independent living centers will play an important role as partners in this effort, as we create a better and stronger CDPAP for home care users and caregivers.”
“Not every center got involved, but we thought it was a program that empowered individuals with disabilities to have more control over their home care,” the executive director of the Long Island Center for Independent Living, Susan McCormack, said about CDPAP.
McCormack said the center made the latest agreement with the state in order to continue being a facilitator for the program.
The Levittown Center was founded over 40 years ago and assists thousands of consumers through its different services each year. The ILC added a consumer-directed program roughly 25 years ago which currently helps about 250 people annually through the CDPAP.
McCormack said the ILC will wait and see how this new partnership affects the center, as well as the community that it serves.
“We like the personal one-on-one relationships that we have with our consumers, and I think that we’ll be able to continue that to a certain extent,” McCormack said. “We also expect that we are gonna see a higher volume of consumers coming to us.”
The state Department of Health says CDPAP allows eligible Medicaid members to pick their own personal caregiver if they meet certain requirements. The department is also assisting in the partnerships and transition to PPL, according to the governor’s office.
“New York State is demonstrating our ongoing commitment to protecting those who are served by this program,” State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said.
The latest agreement will also take some of the in-depth business-related responsibility away from the individual centers and give that to PPL. The governor’s office announced in September 2024 that the company won the contract to manage the state’s CDPAP. PPL is a healthcare management service that will help the state centralize its Medicaid program.
AIM Independent Living Center, ARISE, Inc.; Finger Lakes Independence Center, Inc.; Independent Living, Inc.; Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley, Inc.; Rockland Independent Living Center dba Bridges, Resource Center for Independent Living, Southern Tier Independence Center, The Center for Disability Rights; and Western New York Independent Living, Inc. are the other 10 centers listed in the agreement.
