Community First Choice Program

What is the Community First Choice Program?

Community First Choice (CFC) is a program that offers home and community-based attendant services and supports to children and adults with disabilities and special health care needs who receive STAR+PLUS Medicaid. It started in Texas in 2015.

The Texas Health and Human Services Community First Choice web page has more details on the program.

What Services Does the Program Offer?

CFC offers support with activities of daily living (ADLs) and health-related tasks, services to help a person learn how to care for themselves, and backup systems to make sure there are no gaps in services.

CFC services include:

• Personal attendant care, such as help with daily living activities, household chores, transportation and health-related tasks.
• Support to train and manage personal attendants.
• Habilitation services, such as self-care, hygiene, household tasks, money management, socialization, community activities and more.
• Emergency response support for people who live alone or have long gaps between caregivers.
• Respite care services.

All CFC services happen in a home or community setting, not in an institution. Consumer Directed Services is a choice for certain CFC services. A person or family can pick, hire, fire and manage the people who give their child services.

Who Can Get Services?

To be able to get CFC services, a person must:

• Be able to get Medicaid.
• Need help with activities of daily living, such as dressing, bathing and eating.
• Need an institutional level of care if they do not get CFC services. This includes care at a hospital, Intermediate Care Facility (ICF), nursing home or psychiatric hospital. An ICF is a residential or day program for people with an intellectual or developmental disability (IDD).

CFC is not a Medicaid waiver program, also called a 1915(c) waiver program. But people who are on an interest list for Medicaid waiver programs may also be able to get CFC services while waiting.

See our web pages on the Medicaid waiver programs to learn more about each one:

• Community Living Assistance and Support Services (CLASS)
• Deaf Blind with Multiple Disabilities (DBMD)
• Texas Home Living (TxHmL)
• Home and Community-based Services (HCS)

How Can My Child Get Services?

To learn more and begin to sign up your child for CFC services:

• If your child is age 20 and under, call Texas Medicaid and Healthcare Partnership Personal Care Services at 1-888-276-0702 or contact your Medicaid managed care organization (MCO).
• If your child is age 21 and older, go to your Local Intellectual and Developmental Disability Authority (LIDDA). LIDDAs have different names in different communities and offer behavioral or mental health programming, among other services.