Dear Editor,
Two Arizona families in the same zip code are raising five-year-olds. One child plays independently while a parent works nearby. The other, like Kole, a non-verbal child with sensory challenges and poor impulse control, cannot be left alone for even a moment. For years, the Arizona Department of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) provided services to help families like Kole’s. But those safeguards are vanishing.
On October 1, AHCCCS and DDD replaced individualized assessments with new rigid, age-based caps on two critical services: Attendant Care (ATC), which provides supervision and assistance for children who cannot be left alone, and Habilitation (HAH), which builds communication and daily living skills. Under the new rules, individual needs are not taken into consideration and there are no exceptions.
Consider two seven-year-olds with autism. One is verbal and mostly independent. The other relies on a feeding tube, is non-verbal, and engages in dangerous behaviors requiring constant supervision and intervention. Regardless of actual need both now receive the same cap which is no more than nine hours of habilitation a week, and no supervisory attendant care. Gianna, age eight, has Skraban-Deardorff syndrome and requires round-the-clock supervision to avoid life-threatening behaviors. Yet she, too, is cut off. These blanket restrictions ignore medical reality.
Caregivers are already hanging by a thread. Arizona’s disability workforce faces high turnover, leaving members with approved services but often no staff to fill them. Slashing hours will only make the crisis worse. Parents will be forced out of the workforce, children will face increased hospitalizations, and some families will reach a breaking point.
The process to create and roll out the new policy itself was broken. Key details, including the massive reduction of Attendant Care and Habilitation for young children, were withheld until after the public comment period, leaving families silenced and unprepared. It feels like members of the disability community were deliberately excluded from decisions that directly affect their lives.
Arizona defends these cuts as a budget fix, but the math doesn’t add up. Federal data show that home and community-based services cost far less than institutional placements. Cutting home-based care doesn’t save money, it shifts costs into more expensive settings like ERs, crisis placements, and institutions. These group homes and nursing care facilities double and in some cases quadruple costs to the state annually as compared to home and community based services.
The contradiction is glaring. Arizona invests heavily in early intervention for children under two, recognizing that early supports save money and build independence. Yet at age three, many of those same children transition to DDD, where age-based caps now abruptly deny them the supports they need.
This is not a partisan issue, it is a human one. Vulnerable children deserve protection, and families deserve support. Arizona must restore common sense: bring back individual assessments, allow exceptions for extraordinary care, and keep kids safe at home and in their communities. We know how to balance priorities, our families do it every day. What we cannot do is accept policies that endanger our children, destabilize families, and cost taxpayers more in the long run.
Jessica Cates
Raising Voices Coalition
