Social Services Adults Developmental Disability

Personal Care Assistant (PCA) Services

What?
PCAs provide help with daily activities and allows people to be more independent in their own home. A Personal Care Assistant is assigned to an individual and is trained to provide a range of services from assistance with daily living skills to hospital level care. The PCA is supervised by a nurse from the PCA agency. Some families opt for the PCA Choice program. In this program, instead of a nurse overseeing the PCA, the care giver or parent oversees the PCA and the care plan. This program also allows the caregiver to choose, hire and train the PCA.

Who?
In order to be eligible for PCA services, an individual must first be eligible to receive Medical Assistance, including TEFRA, or MinnesotaCare Expanded. An individual must also need services that are medically necessary and ordered by a doctor and be capable of making decisions about their own care or appoint someone who is capable. Currently, to qualify for PCA services an assessment of an individual needs to show dependence in two Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). Until July 1, 2011, to qualify for PCA services an individual only needed to have dependency in one ADL. ADLs include, but are not limited to, eating, grooming, toileting, dressing, bathing, and transportation.

Sometimes as parents, its really hard to admit or even to recognize how long it takes our child to do a task even with our assistance. But for the PCA assessment, its important to be brutally honest when explaining how long it takes our kids to complete even the simplest of tasks to make sure our kids get the most out of the PCA program. -Jenna, parent

How?
Your county public health nurse can arrange an assessment and tell you more about the available PCA options.

Where?
For more information, go to the MN Department of Human Services website.