Washington State Study on the Value of T-Care

Expanding Eligibility for the Family Caregiver Support Program in SFY 2012: Updated Findings
Bridget Lavelle, PhD  David Mancuso, PhD  Alice Huber, PhD  Barbara E.M. Felver, MES, MPA

The 2011 WA State Legislature increased the state funding for the Family Caregiver Support Program (FCSP) in State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2012 by $3.45 million dollars. The expansion allowed FCSP to broaden its reach to family caregivers with a wider range of caregiver burdens, as identified by an evidence-based screening tool, the Tailored Caregiver Assessment and Referral System (TCARE®). A legislatively mandated evaluation of the expansion, completed by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) in November 2012, demonstrated promising findings. Using data from the short follow-up period available at that time, WSIPP found that the expansion was associated with delayed use of Medicaid long-term care
services (LTC). This report revisits the question of how the FCSP expansion affected the use of Medicaid LTC, now that care receivers’ outcomes have been observed for a longer period of time.