The State of the States in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Project

  In 1982, The State of the States in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Project was established to investigate the determinants of public spending for intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) services in the United States. Today the project maintains a 39 year longitudinal record of revenue, spending and programmatic trends in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the United States as a whole. This work reveals the impact over time of federal and state fiscal policy, and illustrates important service delivery trends in the states in community living, public and private residential institutions, family support, supported employment, supported living, Medicaid Waivers, demographics, and related areas. Thanks to an analysis of this data we have been able to observe the significant changes and progress in the services and supports available to people with I/DD over the past four decades. For example, as of 2015 Vermont had the most Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Waiver federal-state spending per capita when compared to any other state and the District of Columbia. By contrast, Mississippi had the least Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Waiver federal-state spending per capita in the country. Using that data executives can target their services and adjust operations accordingly to maximize the impact they can make in the lives of individuals and their families in the I/DD community. Attendees at the upcoming OPEN MINDS I/DD Executive Summit – powered by VERTESS and CapGrow Partners – will have the opportunity to be the first in the country to hear from David Braddock, PhD, on the latest edition of “The State of the States in Developmental Disabilities: 2017”.  Dr. Braddock will deliver the plenary address at our summit including an analysis of emerging data on availability, cost, reimbursement models and other critical factors for effective service delivery.  The CapGrow team feels strongly in sharing this pivotal information with others in an effort to collaborate on best practices; as such, each attendee will receive a copy of the latest data in “The State of the States in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: 2017”. The OPEN MINDS I/DD Executive Summit was created for thought leaders and executives in the I/DD community to come together and discuss best practices to enhance the impact everyone is making in the lives of the individuals we all support. David Braddock, PhD, is Senior Associate Vice President of the University of Colorado (CU) System and Executive Director of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities. He holds the endowed Coleman-Turner Chair in Cognitive Disability and is a professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry at CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus. His research interests include long-term care policy, health promotion and disease prevention, and public spending for developmental disabilities. Prior to coming to Colorado in 2001, he was also founding head of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) Department of Disability and Human Development and director of its Research Institute. At UIC, he was instrumental in establishing the nation's first PhD Program in Disability Studies and was founding director of UIC’s federally chartered Center of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. Earlier in his career, he worked in governmental affairs and research in Washington, D.C. at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare’s Secretary's Committee on Mental Retardation, and at the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC). Prior to Washington, Braddock worked at two state institutions for people with intellectual disabilities in Texas and Missouri as a research technician and classroom teacher.