A Closer Look at the Administration for Community Living (ACL)
Another reason to do comparative, international research is that it requires you to think more deeply about your own systems. (But you knew that already, right?)
For example, even though Kim blogged about the press release last year, somehow I had failed to realize fully there is a new player on the “federal” block, the Administration for Community Living (ACL). ACL was created in 2012 to “bring together the Administration on Aging, the Office on Disability, and the Administration on Developmental Disabilities into a single agency that supports both cross-cutting initiatives and efforts focused on the unique groups, such as children with developmental disabilities or seniors with dementia.”
The organizational chart on the ACL website shows the Administration on Aging (AoA) as still in existence, now one of four groups under the ACL authority, which in turn is under the authority of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Hmmm. On the one hand, I’m all in favor of clearer avenues for assistance to older adults and persons with disabilities, especially if this reduces the potential for gaps or confusion for people who were disabled and now are both “older” and still disabled. Further, one could argue that linking certain social services to a disability-related need would be more cost efficient, and could even reduce the potential for stereotyping of older persons as presumptively disabled in some way. “Community Living” is certainly a friendlier name, I suppose. On the other hand, however, I also worry that ACL could represent a reduction of important services, especially legal services, that have been available to older adults without proof of specific disability.
I’d love to hear from any of our readers that have insights into the relationship between AoA, ACL and social services in general, especially as I am in the middle of trying to explain the U.S. approach to social care for older persons to folks on the other side of the pond.