How-To Guides

Every one of these started as a question somebody could not get answered on the phone.

This is the practical side of the site: applications, appeals, FOIA requests, eligibility paperwork, getting paid as a family caregiver, and what to do when a program closes with no notice. Step by step, with the forms named and the deadlines stated. Nothing here promises an outcome. It tells you what the process is and where families most often lose.

Michigan’s Three Waivers Explained: HSW, MI Choice, and the Children’s Waiver

Comparison Tools How-To Guides Medicaid Michigan-Specific

Michigan’s Three Waivers Explained: HSW, MI Choice, and the Children’s WaiverMichigan runs three separate home and community based waivers, and they do not connect the way families assume. Different eligibility,...

Documentation Strategies How-To Guides Medicaid Policy Analysis

Medicaid work requirements start January 2027. Is your family member exempt? Eighty hours a month, ages 19 to 64, starting January 1, 2027. Your adult child is almost certainly exempt....

Caregiver Economics Family Caregiving How-To Guides Michigan-Specific

Can Michigan pay you to care for your adult child? A step-by-step guide to Home Help Yes, once they turn eighteen. Michigan’s Home Help program is a Medicaid State Plan...

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides Michigan-Specific

Building evidence that gets services approved: photograph, video, write it down Five kinds of evidence decide most waiver and service disputes, and four of them you have to create yourself....

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

The binder that could save your family: building a lifetime advocacy record Nine sections, one three-ring binder, and a rule about writing things down that has settled more disputes in...

Day Programs How-To Guides Provider Sustainability Workforce Crisis

What happens when the day program closes and nobody tells you what’s next Nearly three in ten disability service providers discontinued programs because they could not staff them. There is...

Advocacy Resources Caregiver Economics Family Caregiving How-To Guides

Seven tax breaks disability caregivers keep leaving on the table Most families supporting an adult child with a disability claim two of these. The other five exist, are legal, and...

Advocacy Resources How-To Guides Michigan-Specific

How to Testify at the Michigan Legislature: A Practical Guide for Families Three minutes. That’s often all the time a family gets in front of a legislative committee. Used well,...

Advocacy Resources How-To Guides Michigan-Specific

The Michigan Advocacy Toolkit: 7 Free Resources Every Family Should Know Seven free, real, currently active tools and organizations, each doing something specific a Michigan family can put to use...

Adult Transition How-To Guides Michigan-Specific

The Michigan 5-Step Transition Survival Guide Five specific steps, in order, for a Michigan family navigating the years around their autistic child’s eighteenth birthday. No single one of these is...