Hartford, Connecticut — A Medicaid-funded program that helps thousands of Connecticut residents with disabilities live at home — rather than in nursing facilities — is on the chopping block, and the families who depend on it are fighting back.
Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed eliminating Community First Choice, a state program that allows roughly 7,000 qualifying individuals to hire personal care attendants of their own choosing. Under his budget plan, those enrollees would be shifted to home- and community-based waiver programs, which often carry waiting lists stretching years — or in some cases, a decade.
“For the governor to even propose cutting this program is just unbelievably cruel,” said Lorra Jorden, whose son Alexi — who has profound autism and multiple disabilities — relies on the program for daily care. “The legislature should just throw it back in his lap and say, ‘No.'”
A Program Built Around Choice
Community First Choice, which launched in Connecticut in 2015, gives Medicaid-eligible individuals with significant care needs direct control over who helps them. Unlike agency-managed care, participants recruit and manage their own attendants — and in some cases, like Alexi Jorden’s, a family member can serve as a paid caregiver.
The program has no enrollment cap. Anyone who qualifies can sign up, a design that disability advocates say is the point. The waiver programs that would replace it are capped — which means new applicants could wait years before receiving any services.
In fiscal year 2025, Connecticut spent more than $4.3 billion on long-term care — nearly 40% of its entire Medicaid budget. About 60% of that went to home- and community-based care; the rest funded institutional settings like nursing homes.
The Governor’s Case
State officials say the program’s costs have grown beyond what the state can sustain. Between 2018 and 2025, CFC enrollment more than doubled and costs jumped from $88.8 million to $371 million a year. The Lamont administration argues those dollars are crowding out other home-based programs.
“Our goal is to reinvest some of those savings into the waivers so that you’re not on the waitlist for years,” said Chris Collibee, a spokesperson for the governor’s budget office.
Officials also contend the program places an unfair administrative burden on participants, who must handle hiring, scheduling and sometimes the difficult task of dismissing caregivers. A replacement framework, they say, would offer agency-based services while still preserving some degree of caregiver selection.
What Advocates Say Could Happen
Disability rights attorneys are calling the plan impractical at best. Sheldon Toubman of Disability Rights Connecticut said that eliminating CFC without first expanding waiver capacity would effectively funnel newly qualifying residents into nursing homes they don’t want to enter — and can’t afford to avoid.
“Even if we came up with the money for these people, what about the people already waiting on the waiting list for years?” Toubman said. He argued that the administration could simply add agency-based options alongside the existing program — rather than eliminating it entirely.
That pressure is playing out against a broader backdrop of long-term care strain in Connecticut, a state that has already seen a nursing home ordered to close after a resident wandered out and died in recent months.
Anyone already enrolled in CFC would keep their services under the current proposal. But anyone who newly qualifies — including newly disabled adults and seniors aging into care needs — would face a waitlist before accessing home-based services. In the meantime, many would have little choice but to enter institutional care.
“I don’t belong in a nursing home. I belong in the community,” said Mary-Ann Langton, a West Hartford disability rights advocate who has been enrolled in CFC since 2015. The proposal, she said, threatens the independence of thousands who built their lives around it.
