By:  Madla                                            S.B. No. 1486
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
                                        AN ACT
    1-1  relating to compensation for the provision of care for persons with
    1-2  mental retardation.
    1-3        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-4        SECTION 1.  Section 533.034, Health and Safety Code, is
    1-5  amended to read as follows:
    1-6        Sec. 533.034.  Authority to Contract for Community-Based
    1-7  Services.  The department may cooperate, negotiate, and contract
    1-8  with local agencies, hospitals, private organizations and
    1-9  foundations, community centers, physicians, and other persons to
   1-10  plan, develop, and provide community-based mental health and mental
   1-11  retardation services.  Notwithstanding Sections 4.02, 11.01, and
   1-12  12.04, Family Code, and Section 533.004, a caretaker, including a
   1-13  parent or family member, of a person with mental retardation of any
   1-14  age and living under any conditions, may be contracted with and
   1-15  compensated for providing care.
   1-16        SECTION 2.  Subsection (a), Section 535.004, Health and
   1-17  Safety Code, is amended to read as follows:
   1-18        (a)  The department shall provide assistance to compensate a
   1-19  client for present and future expenses incurred to maintain in the
   1-20  community a family member with a mental disability or a person with
   1-21  a mental disability who lives independently, including:
   1-22              (1)  the purchase or lease of special equipment or
   1-23  architectural modifications of a home to improve or facilitate the
    2-1  care, treatment, therapy, general living conditions, or access of
    2-2  the person with a mental disability;
    2-3              (2)  medical, surgical, therapeutic, diagnostic, and
    2-4  other health services related to the person's mental disability;
    2-5              (3)  counseling or training programs that assist a
    2-6  family in providing proper care for the family member with a mental
    2-7  disability or assist the person with a mental disability who lives
    2-8  independently, and that provide for the special needs of the family
    2-9  or person;
   2-10              (4)  attendant care, home health aid services,
   2-11  homemaker services, and chore services that provide support with
   2-12  training, routine body functions, dressing, preparation and
   2-13  consumption of food, and ambulation;
   2-14              (5)  respite support for a family that is the client;
   2-15              (6)  transportation services for the person with a
   2-16  mental disability; <and>
   2-17              (7)  transportation, room, and board costs incurred by
   2-18  the family or the person with a mental disability during evaluation
   2-19  or treatment of the person with a mental disability that have been
   2-20  preapproved by the department; and
   2-21              (8)  a basic room and board grant.
   2-22        SECTION 3.  The importance of this legislation and the
   2-23  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
   2-24  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
   2-25  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
    3-1  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
    3-2  and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
    3-3  passage, and it is so enacted.