Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced today that her administration plans to take steps to assist families waiting for disability services in Arkansas. Earlier this month, Ozarks at Large reported on the Community and Employment Support, or CES, waiver waitlist.
More than 2,400 Arkansans are currently waiting to receive services like therapies and medical supplies to support people with intellectual or developmental disabilities. The waitlist, for some, is as long as a decade.
In a statement released this morning, the Sanders administration says they have plans to develop a way to increase the availability of CES waivers. Arkansas Secretary of the Department of Human Services Janet Mann says the state looks forward to making this change as expeditiously as possible.
The Sanders administration says families on the waitlist are able to access 25 of the 29 services available, but one of the services not included is the one that is most commonly requested: supportive living services.
Representative Nicole Clowney says she is grateful and hopeful to see the governor and DHS are acknowledging the CES waitlist crisis.
"This really does seem to be a good start. As always, the opinion that matters most is that of the families who are directly impacted by these policies. I'm so grateful that their advocacy has led to state action, and we will be watching very closely as details about the proposed solution are finalized and put into motion, so that we can better assess whether these families' needs are, in fact, being met."
Representative Clowney and other lawmakers have requested that Governor Sanders call a special session to use state funds to eliminate the waitlist.
Families impacted by the CES waiver waitlist plan to gather at the state Capitol tomorrow afternoon to bring further attention to the issue and ask state leaders to fund a plan to end the CES waiver waitlist.
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