Many families in Connecticut who rely on Community First Choice, or CFC, for disability-related in-home support are urging lawmakers not to allow a proposal by Gov. Ned Lamont to end the program. In stories described by advocates, the program has helped families keep loved ones at home with attendant care they can tailor to daily needs, including help with routine activities and communication support.
Under CFC, eligible Medicaid recipients use state program funds to hire personal care attendants for tasks such as eating, bathing, brushing teeth, and getting dressed. Advocates described CFC as giving participants flexibility in how care is managed and who provides it, contrasting it with waiver services that can be more limited in who qualifies to join quickly.
Supporters of Lamonts proposal say the state should shift resources toward other home- and community-based options as CFC grows. The programs are paid through Medicaid, Connecticut officials said, with long-term care making up a large share of the states Medicaid budget. Between 2018 and 2025, advocates and officials alike described CFC enrollment as more than doubling, and CFC annual costs rising from $88.8 million to $371 million.
Connecticut budget officials argued that the growth in CFC enrollment and spending has strained the states broader home- and community-based care system, in part because waiver programs are capped. Chris Collibee, a spokesperson for the governors budget office, said the states goal is to reinvest savings so that people are not on waiver waitlists for years.
Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves, a Connecticut Department of Social Services official, has also characterized CFC enrollment levels as unsustainable. At a separate public hearing in February, officials told lawmakers that people already enrolled in CFC would be able to keep their current services, while those seeking to newly enroll would likely have to qualify for waiver programs with the potential for longer delays.
Advocates say the proposed shift would undermine a core feature of CFC: autonomy for participants who hire and manage their own attendants. Rob Blanchard, a spokesperson for Lamont, said the governors proposal would move people toward enhanced support and case management, while retaining some options for selecting a caregiver, and framed the current CFC model as requiring participants to act as employers by recruiting, managing, and sometimes dismissing caregivers while tracking budgets and care plan hours.
Families and disability rights advocates counter that the states plan does not fully account for what they said are real-life consequences of capped waivers. Attorney Sheldon Toubman, of Disability Rights Connecticut, called the governors assertion “bogus,” arguing that agency-based services could be offered alongside CFC rather than eliminating it. Toubman told lawmakers that if CFC were ended, people newly requiring nursing-home-level care who want to receive that care at home would face a lengthy waitlist, and in the meantime, many would be forced into institutional settings.
Other advocates argued the proposal also risks reversing progress toward keeping people out of institutions. Fran Traceski, a parent of an adult with disabilities who serves on boards of organizations for disabled people in Connecticut, described the CFC changes as a step backward and said Lamonts plan would undercut promised support. Tom Fiorentino, who leads the subcommittee of the Department of Social Services that advises on the program and is also on the board of directors of The ARC Connecticut, compared the proposed shift to removing medical support rather than replacing it with an equivalent solution, saying, “That’s not how you run programs.”
As the debate continues in Connecticut, Lorra Jorden, whose family uses CFC for her son’s at-home care, said the program has been successful in keeping him at home and framed the governors proposal as harmful. She said, “It has been a wonderful, successful, program to keep people like my son at home, safe and sound,” while also arguing that families and legislators should reject the plan.