How to become an OPWDD Support Broker in New York

Who becomes a broker

The training pathway

Authorization is training-based. Before an initial authorization, you have to demonstrate that you have met OPWDD's Initial Training Standards for Support Brokers. In practice that means two stages.

• Four Initial Broker Training Requirements

  All completed before delivering any Support Brokerage services:

  1. Self-Advocacy / Self-Determination — should be taken before the BTI.
  2. Person-Centered Planning — must include both Introduction to Person-Centered Planning and Advanced Person-Centered Planning. Together or separately.
  3. Broker Training Institute (BTI) — the philosophy of Self-Direction, broker responsibilities, billing and documentation, and Circle of Support training.
  4. Self-Direction Budget / Template — required in order to access the Budget Template at all.

  Where a training has a test you must pass it; where it has multiple modules it is not complete until every element is done.

• Eight further OPWDD Required Trainings

  Available from the DDRO Self-Direction Liaison for independent brokers, and to be completed by the end of your first calendar year. Those marked annual recur every calendar year.

  1. Privacy and Security of Health Information — annual
  2. Overview of Developmental Disabilities — once
  3. Infection Control / Blood Borne Pathogens / TB — annual
  4. Medicaid Compliance — annual
  5. PICA, if relevant to someone you work with — once
  6. PRAISE, which replaces Incident and Abuse Reporting — annual
  7. Right to Know — annual
  8. Rights and Responsibilities of Persons Receiving Services — once

• Authorization

  Once the Initial Training Standards are met you are added to OPWDD's centralized authorization record and recognized as authorized. Keep your training certificates — you must give copies to the DDRO Self-Direction Liaison when you ask to work in a region, and to every Fiscal Intermediary that bills for your services.

• Annual professional development

  Twelve hours a year, and you are not paid from anyone's Self-Direction budget for that time. Initial broker training does not count toward it. In your first year the requirement is pro-rated by when your authorization took effect: 1 Aug–31 Oct, twelve hours; 1 Nov–31 Jan, nine; 1 Feb–30 Apr, six; 1 May–30 Jun, three.

If you are a parent thinking about doing this yourself

You can, and a fair number of families do — usually because the brokers in their area are full, expensive, or not very good. Two things to be clear about first.

You will not be paid. Family members who live in the same household as the person, and parents, may not be paid for providing broker services. This is a conflict-of-interest rule, and it is firm. You may fill the role unpaid.

You still have to do the training. The initial broker training requirements apply to you exactly as they apply to someone doing it for a living. That is a real commitment of time before you write a single line of budget.

What the job is actually like

Brokerage is not case management and it is not care work. On any given week it looks like: writing justifications that will survive review, chasing quotes, sitting in a family's kitchen while they disagree about what the person actually wants, explaining to a Liaison why a request is reasonable, and keeping service notes precise enough to survive an audit.

The documentation standard is stricter than newcomers expect. Start and stop times for every session, clear records of when the person was not present, fifteen-minute increments. OPWDD publishes an audit protocol for Support Brokerage; read it before you start, not after your first audit.

The parts people underestimate

• You are a writer. Most of the value you add is in how well a justification is argued.
• You are a translator. Between what a family says and what OPWDD's categories recognise.
• You are sometimes the only person saying no. A budget full of things that will be rejected is not a kindness.
• Your relationship with your regional office matters. It is a small world and reputations travel.

Starting out

• Contact OPWDD about the broker interest form and the training schedule for your region
• Complete the four Initial Broker Training Requirements, then the eight OPWDD Required Trainings
• Keep every training certificate — the Liaison and each FI will want copies
• Get your authorization confirmed and note the 31 July expiry
• Read ADM #2019-05R and ADM #2019-06 in full — authorization and documentation standards
• Read the OPWDD audit protocol for Support Brokerage
• Introduce yourself to the Fiscal Intermediaries operating in your region
• Plan your twelve hours of annual professional development and who pays for it

Questions families actually ask