SB3052

SECTION 1. The legislature recognizes the important role that community care foster family homes provide in ensuring that citizens in need of nursing home level of care have choices that allow them to receive that type of care in the community rather than in institutions.

Effective July 1, 2007, section 346-331, Hawaii Revised Statutes, governing community care foster family homes, was amended to allow three clients to reside in community care foster family homes at the discretion of the department of human services. This amendment was a major step forward in expanding long-term care placement options in the community.

The purpose of this Act is to establish a program to offer grants, up to a maximum of $25,000 per home, to community care foster family homes, that are small family owned and operated businesses, to assist with the capital investment required to make the home upgrades necessary to accommodate up to three medicaid clients in the home.

The conditions of the grant would require the operator to provide sixty months of care for a second, or a second and third, medicaid client in the community care foster family home. Currently, section 346-331 requires that care be provided for not more than two adults at any one time, at least one of whom shall be a medicaid client, provided that at its discretion, the department of human services may certify the home for a third resident who is a medicaid client at the nursing home level of care.

Under this program, the operator is required to begin providing the care for a second or third medicaid client within eighteen months of completing the home upgrades.

SECTION 2. (a) The department of human services shall establish a grant program to offer home upgrade grants to operators of community care foster family homes, for eligible home upgrades. The department may contract with a private entity to administer this program.

(b) Grants shall be for amounts not to exceed $25,000 for each applicant.

(c) Grants shall be used exclusively for eligible upgrades to homes that will allow the community care foster homes to accommodate two or three non-self-preserving clients in the home. "Eligible upgrades" mean alterations, repairs, or improvements to an existing housing unit that substantially improves the fire safety of the community care foster family home in compliance with the department's administrative rules regarding fire safety in a community care foster family home. These upgrades will exceed the requirements for single family dwellings.

The housing unit to which the upgrades will be made shall:

(1) Be a certified community care foster family home or meet the requirements to become certified;

(2) Be located in the State;

(3) Be occupied as the principal place of residence by the eligible community care foster care operator; and

(4) Be used to provide healthcare as a certified community care foster family home.

(d) The department or its designee shall develop an application process and shall review applications for the grant and the building permit application, if required by the proposed home upgrades, to ensure that the home upgrades achieve the purpose of the grant and are in compliance with the department's administrative rules regarding fire safety in a community care foster family home.

(e) All activities and upgrades undertaken with funds received shall comply with all applicable federal, state, and county statutes, rules, and ordinances, including applicable building codes, license and permit requirements, and agency rules.

(f) To be eligible for a grant, an applicant shall:

(1) Be a citizen of the United States or permanent United States resident alien and a resident of the State of Hawaii at the time of application; and

(2) Have housing and staffing that would meet all the criteria to be licensed or certified as a community care foster family home or be currently certified as a community care foster family home.

(g) After the approval by the department or its designee of the completed home upgrade, a community care foster family home operator who receives a grant shall be required to reimburse the department for the full amount of the grant if in the eighteen months following the approval, the operator has not provided care concurrently for more than one medicaid client.

(h) A community care foster family home operator shall be required to reimburse the department when it does not provide sixty months of care within five years of the approval by the department or its designee of the completed home upgrades. The reimbursement must be equal to the amount of the grant minus the grant amount multiplied by the number of months of care provided divided by sixty months.

(i) The provisions of chapter 42F, Hawaii Revised Statutes, shall not apply to the grants made pursuant to this Act, but all grants made under this Act shall be made only in accordance with the standards and conditions specified in this Act.

(j) Applications for grants will be accepted through May 30, 2009, subject to the appropriation of general funds for this program.

SECTION 3. There is appropriated out of the general revenues of the State of Hawaii the sum of $ 1,600,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary for fiscal year 2008‑2009 for the purposes of this Act.

SECTION 4. The sums appropriated shall be expended by the department of human services for the purposes of this Act.

SECTION 5. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

INTRODUCED BY:	_____________________________
	BY REQUEST

THE SENATE	S.B. NO.	3052
TWENTY-FOURTH LEGISLATURE, 2008
STATE OF HAWAII