How Connecticut pays for disability services

Waiver inventory

Connecticut has no 1915(i) or 1915(k)/CFC authority for this population in the sources retrieved. Connecticut is not a managed care state for long-term services.

State-only funded programs

All DDS appropriations are General Fund; federal Medicaid reimbursement for waiver claims is credited to DSS rather than DDS, so the DDS budget lines below are gross state dollars. The following lines carry no federal match at all (FY 2026 estimated, from the Governor's FY 2027 midterm budget):

• Family Support Grants, $3,700,840. Flexible cash grants to families supporting a relative with intellectual disability at home. DDS. portal.ct.gov
• Rent Subsidy Program, $5,262,312. Rental subsidies for people with intellectual disability living in their own homes or supported living settings; covers room and board that Medicaid cannot pay. DDS.
• Housing Supports and Services, $1,400,000. DDS.
• Emergency Placements, $5,980,932. Crisis and emergency residential placements. DDS.
• ID Partnership Initiatives, $2,528,138. DDS.
• Behavioral Services Program, $11,952,600. Services for children with co-occurring intellectual disability and behavioral health needs. DDS.
• Clinical Services, $2,337,724 (FY 2027 recommended $2,437,724, including $100,000 for a dental anesthesiologist at the Norwich and Southbury Training School dental clinics).
• Supplemental Payments for Medical Services, $2,258,132.
• Provider Bonuses, $50,000,000 in FY 2025 actual, zero in FY 2026 and FY 2027.

Southbury Training School (state-operated ICF/IID) costs sit inside Personal Services and Community Residential Services rather than a separate line.

County / regional / local funding

None identified. Connecticut abolished county government in 1960; there are no county boards, county levies, or regional center allocations. DDS operates three administrative regions (North, South, West) funded entirely from the state General Fund. Checked: OPM FY 2027 budget document (municipal aid volume and DDS agency detail), DDS website, DDS funding guidelines.

Funding scale

• Total DDS appropriation, all funds: $1,544,165,582 actual FY 2025; $1,583,907,828 estimated FY 2026; $1,628,565,506 appropriated FY 2027 ($1,628,665,506 as recommended). portal.ct.gov
• Community Residential Services line: $851,576,384 FY 2025 actual; $904,425,562 FY 2026 estimated; $938,815,100 FY 2027. Same source.
• Employment Opportunities and Day Services line: $361,381,340 FY 2025 actual; $399,787,925 FY 2026 estimated; $407,451,072 FY 2027. Same source.
• Waiver service spending projected in the April 2026 cost-neutrality demonstrations: Comprehensive $973,383,257; IFS $141,368,081; EDS $49,952,271. Combined about $1.165 billion in waiver services for waiver year 1. Autism waiver $6,390,493 in its waiver year 1.
• Spending per participant (waiver Factor D, WY1 of the April 2026 drafts): Comprehensive $170,768.99; IFS $31,415.13; EDS $20,053.10. Autism waiver $15,324.92 (WY1, Jan 2023).
• People served in DDS waivers: 12,691 combined unduplicated capacity across the three DDS waivers (5,700 + 4,500 + 2,491), plus up to 475 in the autism waiver.
• FMAP: 50.00 percent for FY 2026, the statutory floor. kff.org
• State versus federal share: at the 50 percent floor, roughly half of waiver service spending is federally reimbursed; the DDS appropriation itself is 100 percent General Fund with reimbursement received by DSS.
• Waiting list: DDS maintains a residential waiting list. The most recent figure located is 928 people (2023), down from 961 in 2013, reported by CT Mirror (secondary). ctmirror.org No current DDS-published count was found; the DDS website no longer posts a waiting list report and cga.ct.gov was not retrievable. The autism waiver separately states that DSS maintains a waiting list and selects entrants by application date.

Residential funding detail

Connecticut funds four distinct residential models, all priced in the DDS Funding Guidelines (version June 25, 2026, rates effective July 1, 2026):

Community Living Arrangements and Continuous Residential Supports (CLA/CRS). These are the state's licensed group homes and supervised apartment clusters. Payment is an annualized budget set by a matrix of house size (1 to 8 beds) crossed with the individual's Level of Need score (1 to 8). Examples: a 1-bed setting runs $39,684 at LON 1 to $328,200 at LON 8; a 4-bed setting runs $39,684 at LON 1 to $236,064 at LON 8; an 8-bed setting runs $31,752 at LON 1 to $202,164 at LON 8. Residential budgets of $440,000 or more require Deputy Commissioner approval, as does any combined residential and day budget of $475,000 or more. One-to-one staffing is funded separately: 24-hour one-to-one raw cost is $253,743 per year at a $35.36 hourly rate over 138 hours per week; 16-hour awake one-to-one is $150,775. The individual's LON funding contributes $38,613 to $77,226 toward that one-to-one staff, with the balance ($176,517 to $215,130) added above the LON.

Community Companion Homes (CCH), the host home model. A licensee supports one or two people in the licensee's own home. Service and Support annualized amounts run $22,560 (LON 1) to $55,968 (LON 8), plus a Community Transportation/Vehicle rate of $13,632 to $28,848, for totals of $36,192 to $84,816. Rent of $500 per month ($6,000 per year) is paid to the licensee by the individual, on top of the service rate. Pre-placement CCH rates run $61.81 to at least $108.69 per day by LON.

Shared Living. Vendor rate up to $307 per day, also available as a self-directed service at the same $307 per day maximum.

Individualized Home Supports (IHS), the in-home and own-home model. Hourly rate $60.16, with hours capped by LON: 14 hours per week at LON 1 up to 48 hours per week at LON 8 for people in their own homes; 11 to 45 hours per week when receiving Clustered Supports. A Safety Net add-on of $7,548 per year applies, and clustered settings receive an annualized cluster safety net of $14,712 (12 or more per cluster) to $64,416 (2 per cluster) per person. Group IHS is $60.16 for one person, $35.08 for two, $25.88 for three. IHS Behavior Hours are $140.88 per hour, 0 to 24 hours per year by LON.

Room and board. Federal financial participation is not claimed for room and board except for respite in an approved non-private-residence facility and for the rent and food attributable to an unrelated live-in caregiver. People living in CLAs, CCHs and shared living pay room and board from SSI and SSDI. The state supplements this through the DDS Rent Subsidy Program ($5,262,312 in FY 2026) and Housing Supports and Services ($1,400,000).

ICF/IID. Southbury Training School remains a state-operated ICF/IID. Private ICF/IID per diems are set by DSS on a prospective basis; the DSS ICF/IID rate PDF URL surfaced in search now returns 404 and the current rate schedule was not retrieved.

Rate structure link: portal.ct.gov

Comparable service rates

Official rate schedule links

• DDS Funding Guidelines, June 25, 2026 (rates effective July 1, 2026): portal.ct.gov
• DDS Funding Guidelines, March 9, 2026: portal.ct.gov
• DDS Funding Guidelines, February 26, 2026: portal.ct.gov
• DDS FY 2026 Funding Guidelines, August 11, 2025: portal.ct.gov
• Fiscal Intermediary procedure codes, May 6, 2026: portal.ct.gov
• Employment Incentive one-time file, July 1, 2026: portal.ct.gov
• FY25 self-hire rates and services: portal.ct.gov
• DDS rates index page: portal.ct.gov

Notable features and flags

• October 21, 2025: DSS and DDS issued a Notice of Intent to renew the Employment and Day Supports waiver and amend the Comprehensive and IFS waivers effective April 1, 2026, adding a new Virtual Health Consultation telehealth service to all three waivers and a new Transitional Residential Habilitation service (up to 24 months) to Comprehensive and IFS. Public comment closed November 30, 2025. portal.ct.gov
• April 1, 2024 amendment (CT.0437.R04.03) authorized payment to family caregivers and legal guardians for personal care assistance, including parents of school-age children.
• FY 2025 included a one-time $50,000,000 Provider Bonuses appropriation, dropped to zero in FY 2026 and FY 2027, a significant cliff for private providers.
• The FY 2027 midterm budget funds a 4.9 percent rate increase for home health aides and low-wage workers under Medicaid HCBS waivers through DSS, with a $690,000 catch-up for DMHAS waiver providers. DDS providers are on the separate LON-based funding guideline schedule.
• Self-directed wage floors step up on April 1, 2027: Individualized Home Supports, Personal Support, Individualized Day Supports, Senior Supports and Individual Supported Employment move from $23.50 to $24.50 per hour; Adult Companion and hourly respite move from $20.75 to $21.75. Sleep Assignment is pegged to the Connecticut minimum wage.
• Overnight camp respite is on a published multi-year escalator through June 30, 2028 ($353 per diem in spring 2026 rising to $421 by January 2028).
• The autism waiver is the state's only IDD-adjacent waiver with an explicit, date-of-application waiting list and no residential service, leaving adults with autism and no intellectual disability without a state-funded residential pathway.

Confidence

Solid: the FY 2025 through FY 2027 DDS appropriation lines, all rate figures (taken directly from the June 25, 2026 DDS Funding Guidelines PDF), the residential payment architecture, waiver identifiers, unduplicated participant caps and Factor D per-participant costs (taken from the October 2025 draft waiver applications and the April 2024 approved versions), and the 50 percent FMAP. Estimated or dated: the split between state and federal share, since DDS receives no federal revenue directly and I did not locate a DSS-side reconciliation of DD waiver claims. Could not find: a current DDS residential waiting list count from a primary source (the 928 figure is a 2023 secondary report from CT Mirror); the current DSS ICF/IID per diem schedule, whose URL now 404s; the University of Kansas State of the States Connecticut profile PDF, which is served through an interactive map I could not resolve to a file URL; and cga.ct.gov documents, which failed TLS chain validation and are robots-disallowed to the fetch tool.

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