On November 6, 2025, the AFHC team and attorney went to a full day hearing with the State on a July 2024 Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) claim by the Council for failure to bargain the State’s CBHS waiver change with the State stopping new authorizations of Behavioral Health Personal Care (BHPC) in residential facilities once the resident’s CARE assessment is due.
The AFHC argued that the State’s CBHS decision constituted a unilateral change to a mandatory subject of bargaining, rather than a simple program change as the State claimed. In contrast, the State maintained that the issue had already been bargained with the Council in prior negotiations with former Executive Director, John Ficker, and that the new change imposed no economic impact on providers. According to the State, the new CBHS Priority Program will no longer be paired with SBS because the services are duplicative, and CBHS will be prioritized over SBS when a resident qualifies for both. The State noted that current residents receiving SBS and CBHS will be grandfathered in and therefore unaffected. This new change will only apply to new residents.
The PERC hearing was scheduled as a one-day Zoom hearing. Executive Director Bob Schroeter appeared with Board Chair Dorothy Schlimme, AFHC Lobbyist/Labor Relations consultant Amina Teouri, and longtime AFHC labor counsel Ed Younglove. At the start of the hearing, the PERC examiner encouraged the parties to attempt settlement, even though AFHC had sought resolution for months without success. After a full day of negotiations, and with the support of everyone present, the AFHC team worked with our attorney to reach a settlement agreement with the State’s attorneys.
The terms of the agreement reached with the State include:
When DSHS and/or HCA are proposing programmatic changes which may impact Adult Family Homes, it shall provide notice to the Adult Family Home Council. Notice must be given sufficiently in advance of the actual implementation of a change to allow a reasonable opportunity for meaningful bargaining between the parties. The notice shall be given pursuant to Article 9 of the collective bargaining agreement.
During bargaining, when DSHS and/or HCA are proposing a change, it will ensure there are representatives present who are fully informed about the change and can provide meaningful information about the proposed change. In addition, during bargaining when DSHS and/or HCA are proposing a change, its representatives will confirm with the Adult Family Home Council their understanding of the proposed change.
The above language remains in effect during the current Collective Bargaining Agreement effective July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2027. The parties will work toward incorporating this or similar language into the next collective bargaining agreement between the parties.
This agreement doesn’t give providers money; it would not have been a probable remedy even if we’d prevailed at hearing. The PERC remedy, if we won at hearing, would have likely at best been to order parties back to bargaining. We wanted to address and fix the problem of unilateral program changes that the State was using once and for all, and meaningfully. We believe we achieved that here. What we achieved by the above terms guarantees that program changes will be shared with adequate time, clarity, and certainty to the AFHC in the future, and we will also ask that it becomes a permanent part of our CBAs in the future.
Additionally, on MCO payments, our office staff continues to work successfully with Providers who call us directly to match members with payment issues to HCA for resolution. While MCO issues continue to be an issue regarding timely payments, and while we expect the Clearinghouse project to address this better, the Monday morning HCA rapid response call time has also been helpful to many. We continue to meet with and put pressure on HCA to get the long-awaited Clearinghouse up and open. We now have a commitment for March 2026 should the single vendor submitting receive the job for the Clearinghouse creation.
Finally, our lawsuit in Thurston County Superior Court regarding the meaningful day cut remains active. It alleges the State breached our collective bargaining agreement by ending reimbursement for the Meaningful Day Program. The case is set for a trial in January 2027, and we are currently active in the litigation discovery process.
