As the parent of autistic child, and as a corporate auditor I began to question the money trail after a bad experience with DSPD. The more I dug the more I wondered why Utah has lax accountability of federal funds going to vendors who contract with the state to provide services to the disabled. The contract agencies argue they need a higher rate of pay to attract employees. Why can’t Utah get the same deal that California gets? From what I have heard from state employees, there is lax auditing or oversight of the agencies that receive funds.

According to one Utah Medicaid employee I spoke to, all a nursing home has to do is request an assessment for a raise and it is given. One nursing home just received a raise despite making a one million dollar profit last year.

Better record keeping and account processes must be put in place to ensure accurate spending and efficient use of taxpayers hard earned dollars are spent wisely.

Utah currently has a state surplus of $1 billion. Utah can now afford to help those who cannot help themselves. What does it say about a state that cannot look after it’s weakest members of society from senior citizen’s to the disabled.

The citizen’s of Utah deserve to have more open records about DSPD’s funding. We all need to get together to pool our ideas and resources, to help each other find solutions to help ourselves. DSPD employees also need to be better trained and more knowledgeable about what is available now to parents for help.

DSPD should reduce its pay rates for respite care. The current rate is $20 per hour. No parent I know can afford to pay that for care for a disabled person on their own.

One option that DSPD often does not tell single parents is that if they meet the income guidelines, then Workforce Services can pay for child care for a disabled child up to the age of 18. The normal age cutoff is 13 years old.

Another option no one has broached is to allow insurance companies to cover adult children. That would allow a disabled adult child to be maintained on his/hers parent’s insurance thus saving the state millions in Medicaid costs.

One more option is to have an automatic rate of higher child support paid, as Arizona and California already allow, for the care of a disabled child. To make Utah law automatically have child support for disabled children continue past the age of 18, for life, thus saving millions more in Medicaid, nursing home costs, and possibly the cost of not having to pay low income housing or welfare if person is getting child support and not having to depend on social assistance dollars.