Personal Factors that effect your Service Delivery Options

Both Service Delivery Options – Agency-directed Services & Consumer-directed Services (CDS) – are available for both children and adults.

But the rules about parents ability to work for their child change based on 2 factors:

• Age
• Guardianship of adult participant

Parents of Minor Participants	Parents of Adult Participants who DO NOT HAVE a guardian	Guardians of Adult Participants who HAVE a guardian
For a participant under 18 years old (a minor), a parent is not able to be employed as a paid provider of care under either Service Delivery option. For CDS, a parent of minors is the CDS Employer. For DSA, the Provider agency is the Employer.	For a participant over 18 years old who do not have a court-appointed guardian, a parent is able to employed as a provider of care under either Service Delivery option. For CDS, the participant is the CDS Employer. If they need assistance with this job, they can designate a Designated Representative to help them. If the parent is the paid provider of care, the participant will need to designate a non-parent to be their Designated representative. For DSA, the Provider agency is the Employer.	For a participant over 18 years old who have a court-appointed guardian, a parent who is a court-appointed guardian is able to employed as a provider of care only under the Agency-directed option. For CDS, the guardian and the participant are legally the same entity – therefore, a participant cannot employ their guardian. For DSA, the Provider agency is the Employer. They can employ the guardian to work with the participant.

Here is an official website that lists all the Services that can be managed through Consumer-Directed Services.

Now let’s look at several resources for Parents working as Caregivers