In Missouri, older adults with a qualifying health issue or disability may qualify for Consumer Directed Services. What this means for your mom is that she could hire you to be her paid caregiver. She gets help from a trusted family member and you get paid to provide that care.
Make Sure She Qualifies
To qualify for Consumer Directed Services, your mom has to qualify for MO HealthNet. If she doesn’t qualify for Medicaid yet, she cannot apply for Consumer Directed Services. She’ll need to meet the maximum asset limits before applying for Medicaid.
Your mom has to have a qualifying health condition. This is where it’s important. Alzheimer’s, which is one area where older adults often need home care services, isn’t a qualifying condition. Kidney disease and cancer are qualifying conditions.
She also has to be able to train and direct her caregiver. If your mom cannot direct her own care needs and track her caregiver’s wages and hours, she will not qualify.
Whoever is hired to help your mom through the Consumer Directed Services program has to be 18 or older, mentally and physically able to provide the care she needs, and cannot be a spouse. You can be paid to help her, but your dad cannot.
What Are Her Care Needs?
Make sure your mom knows what your mom’s care needs are. Consumer Directed Services covers:
- Housekeeping: Cleaning or vacuuming floors, making beds, changing sheets and towels, doing the laundry, taking out the trash, washing dishes, and tidying up
- Meals: Cooking and planning meals and snacks, shopping for groceries
- Mobility: Help with transfers from the bed to a walker or wheelchair and walker or wheelchair to a shower chair and back
- Personal care, hygiene, and grooming: Help with b (bathing, showering, oral care, toileting, dressing, nail care, and hair care)
- Reading and writing: Opening mail, reading it out loud, and writing letters or emails as needed
- Scheduling: Arranging medical, dental, and personal care appointments
- Transportation: Shopping trips, urgent care needs, and running errands
That’s a list of some of the care needs your mom may have. She could have others that you help with. Transportation to routine medical appointments may not be covered through Consumer Directed Services if your mom has Non-Emergency Medical Transportation coverage.
It Helps to Hire an Expert in Consumer Directed Services
Personal care assistants are paid $3.99 per unit, with a unit being 15 minutes. If your mom qualifies for eight units of care per day (two hours), you’d get around $16 per hour. Make sure you set aside your taxes from that payment. You’ll be self-employed and are responsible for paying your own employment taxes.
It can be hard to navigate Consumer Directed Services on your own. Talk to a specialist in Consumer Directed Services to learn more about being paid to help your mom.
If you or an aging loved-one is considering CDS (Consumer Directed Services) in Ferguson, MO please contact the caring staff at Home Care MO today. (314) 501-5330
We offer consumer directed services (CDS) in St. Louis County, St. Louis City and St. Charles, as well as Crawford, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Montgomery, Pike, St. Francois, Ste Genevieve, Warren and Washington Counties.
Sources:
https://health.mo.gov/seniors/hcbs/hcbsmanual/pdf/3.00appendix1.pdf
Home Care MO was established by veteran home care agency owners. Home Care MO is a home care agency that works with Missouri’s Consumer Directed Services (CDS) program. CDS is a Medicaid-funded program that enables you to hire the person of your choice to help with your care. This caregiver is also called a personal care attendant (PCA).
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