Minnesota cracked the
top ten and Wisconsin got honorable mention in ADAPT’s ranking
of the 2008 Ten Best and Worst States in the delivery of home and
community services to people with disabilities and older Americans.
The advocacy group recently
announced the rankings in the Hall of States building in Washington,
D.C. The building is home to the National Governors Association,
an organization that has been very vocal in recent years about
the preference of community services over nursing homes and other
institutions. Yet the association hasn’t been
able to inspire its own member states to improve their provision
of those services.
Speakers representing
states in both the best and worst categories spoke at the press
conference about the horrors of nursing home life and the joys
of living in the community in states that provide good community
services. Randy Alexander from Tennessee ADAPT and LaTonya Reeves
from Colorado ADAPT spoke of the disability“underground
railroad” that assists people in states without community services
to move to states where they can live quality lives in their own
homes with the supports and services they need.
The grouping of states into the top and bottom 10 was based
on publicly available data from highly respected researchers, supplemented
by the results of an informal survey widely distributed across the
country by ADAPT. Few surprises emerged in the survey. Many of the
10 states doing the poorest job of providing services that allow
citizens to receive long term care in their own homes in the community
have been on the “worst” list over and over. States are
listed alphabetically, not ranked numerically:
Ten best states: Alaska,
Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont.
Honorable Mention: Kansas, New York, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
Ten worst states: Arkansas,
Georgia, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana
Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas.
Dishonorable mention: Alabama, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania. ![end of story]()
