As person-centered services and supports become more prevalent, people with disabilities are enjoying more choices and opportunities — making it challenging to ensure the quality of every service offered. This timely book helps meet that challenge. Diverse contributors, including researchers, care providers, policy-makers, self-advocates, and family members, combine their expertise to help readers

• understand the changed expectations of people with disabilities and their families — and the resulting challenges to quality enhancement
  
  
• clarify the roles of Medicaid and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
  
  
• address health and safety issues, including investigation of abuse, neglect, and death
  
  
• design databases that track outcomes and target areas for service improvement
  
  
• translate quality information into reliable quality enhancement approaches
  
  
• manage staffing challenges like recruitment, retention, and professional development
  
  
• consider future recommendations and policy directions

Building on Bradley & Bersani’s Quality Assurance for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities, this important resource clarifies the shift toward self-determination and individually tailored supports — and shows professionals in the human services field how to enhance service quality in this rapidly changing world.

About the Editors
About the Contributors
Foreword
Clarence J. Sundram

I. Quality Assurance and Enhancement in Flux

1. New Building Blocks of Quality Assurance
   Valerie J. Bradley
   
   
2. Trends in Quality Assurance and Outcome Monitoring
   Madeleine H. Kimmich
   
   Case Study 1: The Survey and Certification Process: The Evolution of Quality Assurance in Massachusetts
   June E. Rowe and Gail Grossman
   
   Case Study 2: Developing an Internal Quality Enhancement System at the Provider Level: A Pennsylvania Case Study
   Joseph R. Bucci and Denise M. Brown
   
   
3. Accreditation in an Era of Self-Determination
   Dale L. Dutton
   
   
4. Personal Outcomes and Organizational Change
   Tina Campanella
   
   Case Study 3: Philadelphia County’s Attention to Personal Outcomes
   Timothy Gruesel

II. Health and Saftey Issues

5. Procedures for Investigating Deaths in the Developmental Disabilities System: The Experience in Three States
   Madeleine H. Kimmich, Marsha Noll, Roger Stortenbecker, and Dorothy Mullen
   
   
6. Best Practice in Abuse and Neglect Reporting and Investigating
   Richard Cohen
   
   
7. Helping People Be Happy and Safe: Accounting for Health and Safety in How People Want to Live
   Michael W. Smull

III. Outcomes for People

8. Ask Me!^SM A Survey of Quality of Life Designed By and For People with Developmental Disabilities
   Sarah Basehart, Cristine Marchand, and Gordon Scott Bonham
   
   
9. Independent Monitoring for Quality: The Pennsylvania Experience
   Celia S. Feinstein and Guy Caruso

IV. The Future of Public Oversight

10. Federal Policy and Practice in Transition: A Look Ahead at the ICF/MR Program
    Catherine Hayes, Linda Joyce, and Elizabeth Couchoud
    
    
11. Building a Comprehensive Quality Management Program: Organizing Principles and Primary Operating Components
    Robert M. Gettings
    
    
12. International Innovations in Monitoring Service Quality
    Geoffrey P. Jones, Rosemary Lawn, Leena M. Mattikka, and Jan Tøssebro

V. Supports for the New Quality Enhancement

13. The National Core Indicators Project: Monitoring the Performance of State Developmental Disabilities Agencies
    Sarah L. Taub, Gary A. Smith, and Valerie J. Bradley
    
    Case Study 4: Quality Assurance to Quality Enhancement: A Provider Perspective
    Barry Schwartz and Madeline Becker
    
    
14. Selecting Application Software and Services to Improve and Ensure Service Quality
    John Ashbaugh
    
    
15. 2001: A Direct Support Odyssey
    Marianne Taylor, Amy Hewitt, and Julie F. Silver
    
    
16. Speculation on the Shape of Things to Come
    Valerie J. Bradley and Madeleine H. Kimmich

Index