Clark County foster parents still waiting on funding fix

Margo Newman’s retirement is anything but idle.

Since 2013, the former IBM employee and her husband have been a part of Clark County’s specialized foster care system, parenting children who have physical, mental or emotional issues.

The Newmans care for three teenagers and a 9-year-old. For the family and their foster agency, Eagle Quest, to receive Nevada Medicaid funding, the parents must conduct and document two hours of basic skills training with each child every day.

“I’ve been the manager at a Fortune 500 company, and this is a lot of work,” Newman said.

The workload increased last year, when the county required the Newmans to enroll their foster children in an additional treatment model called Together Facing the Challenge.

That means more paperwork and twice as many monthly home visits from case managers, Newman said.

As a result, the Newmans have less time to check homework, cook dinner and take the children to the movies or a park.

“We’re supposed to care for these kids, and this paperwork is just inundating us,” Newman said. “I don’t think it’s sustainable.”

Funding discussions continue

Well more than 100 families in Clark County’s specialized foster care system are running the two treatment models but receive Medicaid funding for only one, according to Eagle Quest director of operations Dave Doyle.

That has created a limbo as local foster care agencies, Medicaid and county and state officials mull how to pay for specialized foster care in Clark County.

Eagle Quest and other local foster agencies receive $72.70 a day from Nevada Medicaid for each child receiving basic skills training.

Doyle said the parties want to shift to using only Together Facing The Challenge. But without the guaranteed flat funding rate, agency leaders fear their funding would drop so much they would be forced to shut down.

Nevada Division of Child and Family Services administrator Kelly Wooldridge said the state is exploring what Medicaid-billable services from Together Facing the Challenge it can bundle together to create multiple levels of daily rates for specialized foster care.

“Some kids in specialized foster care need more services than others, and some need less,” she said. “We want kids to be getting the correct services and for the providers to be reimbursed so they can continue providing them.”

Much work to be done

Wooldridge said funding bundles would require the federal government to agree to amend Nevada’s Medicaid plan.

And several details of the proposed amendment need to be worked out, including what services are billable, how much money each bundle is worth and who can apply for funding.

Wooldridge said the state will begin holding public workshops in the spring to finalize the proposed amendment. It could take the federal government three months to respond once the amendment is submitted.

For now, that leaves the burden of running two models on families such as the Newmans. But Doyle said he believes local foster parents are willing to do it if an amicable solution is coming.

“I think our families are grateful that Medicaid and the state isn’t pulling the rug out from beneath them without putting another adequate funding mechanism in place,” he said. “We’ve held on a long time, so what’s six more months? We can make it.”

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.