2004-10-22 TPACIFICQUEST - Laserfiche WebLink

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facility or program that you can have thats like this that doesnt need a license; and Im not, its, and probably Commissioner Alameda knows a lot more about this than I do. All I can say is that the line is a little vague as to what needs a license. Let me give an example. If I have a friend whos having trouble with their teenage, teenager, and I say, Why dont you have him stay with me for a couple of monthsand Ill see if I can straighten him out, and even if theres an exchange of money for that, like they paid a thousand dollars a month for it, I dont need a license to do that. They take him in a home, you have this kid in your home and you dont need a license. And there are programs, there are unlicensed types of programs, that get people, their parents were exactly in this situation, typically the child will be very troubled but not meet the kind of thing that gets you a health insurance, for example. Its not at a level thatll get a placement to something like Kahi Mohala where youre placed, where youre actually placed and then your health insurance covers it, or the State will cover it if youre on Medicaid, or something like that; but the parent is not able to deal with the kid. There are lotsof,thereareprogramslikethatthatareunlicensed.Allright?Andits,butata certain point, I dont know where it is, you need to get a license; and when youre a Special Treatment Facility, you need to get a license. All right? So what theyre proposing to do is a licensed facility by the Department of Health. If they came in with an unlicensed facility, they would still need, if they wanted to do one of these programs but not be licensed, they would still need a Special Permit to do it in the Ag District. Once you get past having the number of people that you could have at a house, just as a house, like the example that I gave earlier, that would be me, my wife and one other, and one other unrelated person in our house, and I dont need any kind of permit to do that. But once, if theyd come in with an unlicensed program, they would still need a Special Permit to do it, but they would not have needed this Department of Health license. As a Department, and on our side in making a recommendation, we would be more concerned with the type of program, the people who are running it, the kind of person that was there, the security, all those kinds of issues, because there isnt anybody else whos really looking at it as an unlicensed program. Now what were looking at and what gives us a degree of comfort is that theyre proposing to be a licensed program. The Department of Health has a set of rules; and the Department of Health will periodically check to make sure that theyre following the licensing. Now thats one point on this question of licensing. And what theyre saying is correct, they do need the Special Permit to get the license. They need the Department of Health to issue the licenses, theyre going to need a site where they can do it. So we do come first in that process. The other point Id like to make is Im hearing you folks using the high-functioning in two different senses. When they say high-functioning theyre not talking about you go into a regular class in high school and you take the best, the best top half of the class as high-functioning. Theyre talking about the people who are at the bottom, the kids who are definitely having some kind of trouble who may have, they have significant 16