A legislative task force is working to develop a list of the essential services the state should provide to “vulnerable adults” in Wyoming.
Vulnerable adults are defined in state statute as people age 18 and older who are “unable to manage and take care of themselves or their property without assistance as a result of a physical and/or mental disability, or as a result of advanced age,” the Wyoming Department of Family Services and Wyoming Department of Health wrote in a memo to the Wyoming Legislature’s Mental Health and Vulnerable Adults Task Force last month.
DFS is statutorily required to “coordinate a protective services program” for those adults “with the goal of ensuring that every vulnerable adult in need of protective services will have access to protective services,” the memo states.
But the statutory definition of “protective services” is “broad and open-ended,” according to the memo, so “Wyoming lacks a clear definition of the state’s role in addressing the needs of vulnerable adults.”
“The question before the (task force) is therefore: What is the minimum essential services package that is the state’s role to provide in all areas of Wyoming?” the memo states.
Essential services
The two states agencies proposed the following list of essential services in the memo:
-safe housing, including time-limited in-home services to address safety concerns or temporary or long-term housing services
-food, including food assistance programs, food boxes for seniors, and group and home-delivered meals
-medical care, or access to primary care
-transportation, including to non-emergency medical appointments and other needed services
-case management, including identification of needs and efforts to coordinate and facilitate access to needed services
-someone who cares, or access to a responsible, caring adult to help make decisions, including legal guardianships established through court proceedings
“This is what we are proposing as a discussion point for those essential services,” DFS Director Korin Schmidt said.
She added that she’s “very excited for this conversation, because I think it gives all of us a little bit of a firmer understanding (of) the state’s responsibility in this.”
“Right now, we’re all things to all people,” Schmidt said. “(It’s) tricky to manage.”
Wyoming Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, who co-chairs, the task force, agreed that it was “pretty exciting” to see the list of proposed essential services being developed.
“It was just this orb floating out there in statute,” he said. “I’m just really pleased that we’re coming this far.”
‘Welfare state?’
During public comment on the topic, Kipp Dana, CEO of High Country Behavioral Health in Evanston, said he appreciated the discussion about essential services for vulnerable adults, but he also found it to “kind of an odd conversation for Wyoming,” which he described as a “conservative state.”
“It seems a little … politically bizarre (to) be talking at that level, like, ‘Let’s create a welfare state so nobody falls through the cracks,’” Dana said, asking the task force to “question the philosophy” behind their work.
“Be careful that we’re not now thinking we’re on the hook for all essential housing and food and medical care and transportation for everybody who now shows up as a vulnerable adult.”
Larsen thanked Dana for the warning, agreeing that “we need to be careful not to expand government” too far.
Larsen also noted, however, that “there is a role for the state” when it comes to providing protective services for vulnerable adults, and that the task force is trying to better define that role by identifying the services that should be considered essential to “sustain life and keep people protected and preserve their rights.”
“It seems like this would be a reasonable (question) to try and get resolved and set so that you could prevent expansion as well as provide service to a population,” he said.
Schmidt agreed that, regardless of any “philosophical debate” about state overreach, in Wyoming the “government has already decided that it is our problem to solve.”
“The statute says (DFS) shall coordinate a protective services program … ensuring that every vulnerable adult in need of protective services will have access to protective services,” she said. “If the department, which is the state, has that responsibility, then having some definition of what that means will help us fulfill that obligation while also being aware that there is a line before we step into a larger state issue of (being) all things to all people.”
August meeting
The task force will consider potentially modifying and approving the proposed list of essential services for vulnerable adults during its next meeting, which is scheduled to take place Aug. 1 in Torrington, Larsen said.
“We need to be ready to (decide whether) this is the list of essential services so that we can develop that policy moving forward,” he said. “Consider how we make this work – expand (the list) or retract it – but I think that we need to be recommending a policy regarding what essential services are.”