Partnership, collaborative efforts, strategic direction, and thought leadership. These words easily define the lasting relationship Consumer Direct Care Network (CDCN) has shared with our thought partner, Applied Self-Direction (ASD). Like CDCN, ASD works to support and improve self-directed home care across the US. Self-directed home care allows older adults and people with long-term disabilities more choice and control, and the opportunity to stay healthy and happy in their homes and communities.
CDCN was a founding member of ASD’s Financial Management Services (FMS) steering committee, and currently serves as ASD’s Very Large FMS agency representative. Throughout our years of partnership, CDCN and ASD have worked tirelessly to help make self-direction better across the United States.
ASD is the Technical Assistance, Training, and Membership arm of the National Resource Center for Participant-Directed Services (NRCPDS). In addition to providing thought leadership for self-directed programs, ASD offers membership to state programs administering or seeking to administer self-direction programs, FMS agencies who work in the self-directed space, and other self-direction stakeholders.
We are proud to serve on ASD’s steering committee. The steering committee is composed of FMS representatives that reflect agencies of all sizes — small, medium, large, and very large. Agencies are voted onto the committee by their peers. As a representative on the committee, we have been able to drive conversations pertaining to issues within self-direction and have worked collaboratively to offer solutions and opportunities for growth for ASD and its other partner organizations.
ASD has provided incredible value to the self-directed community by offering a myriad of programs, conferences, workshops, and policy work with a goal of building relationships, engaging stakeholders and ultimately forging solutions that last. One of these solutions has been the recent creation of the ASD Government Think Tank, a collective group of government relations leaders within the FMS industry focused on state and federal policy implications and solutions.
Along with focus groups such as these, ASD also hosts conferences and invites members from across the country to workshops and sessions intently focused on self-direction and bringing together state leaders and organizational/business leaders. ASD conferences offer excellent opportunities for education that help organizations such as our own maintain internal expertise on the complex issues inherent in self-directed programs.
Our relationship with ASD has served as a foundational part of our growth and success. Their expertise and willingness to partner with us on training, solution building and strategic planning is exceptional and serves every part of our company. Working with ASD has been more than just an investment of time and money, it has been a valuable relationship of thought, leadership and growth in the realm of self-direction. We look forward to many more years of collective success with ASD.