DODD Quietly Announces Mandatory Home Inspections for All Waiver Recipients

Ohio’s Department of Developmental Disabilities (DODD) is preparing to roll out a new system that will change how it measures people’s care needs and how much providers are paid. These changes will affect more than 40,000 adults and children on DODD waivers and their families.

But within DODD’s recent FAQ is a detail families cannot afford to overlook:

“The environmental assessment section of both the interRAI-ID and ChYMH-DD assessments evaluate the conditions of the home that could make it hazardous or uninhabitable for the person served.”

In plain English, this means that every person on a DODD waiver will be subject to a home inspection conducted by a DODD-trained assessor. These assessors will judge whether your home is “hazardous,” “uninhabitable,” or safe.

DODD has not released the inspection form or the criteria assessors will use to pass judgment on our homes. Families are expected to trust the same state agency that has already shown contempt for transparency and for family caregivers.

A Troubling Pattern

Ohio’s waiver families have cause for concern because of these issues:

Widespread belief that family caregivers are “greedy,” “lazy,” and “mental.”

DODD and the county boards’ disdain for the families they serve is well-documented. When the Ohio Association of County Boards sponsored a training in which county board workers mocked Ohio’s disability families as “greedy,” “lazy,” and “mental,” DODD did nothing. You can still sign our petition here.

It's dangerous to have your home inspected and judged by someone who openly admits they are biased against you and other disability families.

DODD’s past experience with home inspections

Multiple families joined together to file a legal challenge after county board workers entered or attempted to enter private homes without advanced notice, claiming they had the authority to conduct surprise home inspections of waiver recipients at any time, even when the individual was not home or not receiving services. In legal filings before the Supreme Court of Ohio, DODD defended surprise home inspections as “a vital tool for monitoring” people with developmental disabilities.

This policy turns private family homes into institution-like spaces where government workers can come and go as they please.

Risk of abuse, bias, and family separation

Because the interRAI inspection form has not been made public, no one knows what criteria assessors might use to declare a home “hazardous.” Could a household be flagged because a smoker lives there? Because of clutter, chipped paint, or some dirty dishes in the sink? What about a pet pitbull? What if a household member legally owns a firearm but the assessor is anti-Second Amendment? If an assessor labels a home “uninhabitable," could that open the door to involuntary separation or institutionalization? Will there be any clear right to appeal? What about oversight to prevent misuse of this new authority?

Families deserve to know the standards before strangers begin inspecting their homes with pens and clipboards.

DODD’s reckless use of misinformation

Recent public records show that DODD staffers used the Wayback Internet Archive to dig up a defunct webpage about a discontinued safety bed from long ago and then used that information to try to ban doctor-prescribed, medically necessary safety beds from people’s homes. Those same unqualified staffers could soon be the ones training DODD home inspectors on what counts as “hazardous.”

If the same outrageous lack of judgment is applied here, home inspectors could wrongly label a home “hazardous” because of the presence of doctor-prescribed, medically necessary medical equipment.

The Stakes

Some might see this new mandatory “environmental assessment” as nothing to worry about. We disagree. With this step, the state is giving itself the power to evaluate and pass judgment on every home in Ohio where a waiver recipient lives – that’s over 40,000 homes.

Others may believe this is the price families should have to pay for their loved one to receive home and community based waiver services. But we don’t do this for any other type of social safety net program. For example, we don’t require SNAP recipients to submit to “pantry inspections.” We don’t require seniors on Medicare to allow state inspectors to sit in on their colonoscopies. This new policy signals an alarming expansion of state control into private family life.

What Families Can Do

1. Sign up for email updates from End Ohio’s Parent Penalty. We care about the civil rights of people with developmental disabilities, and our coalition has successfully blocked rights violations such as DODD's proposed out of state travel restrictions rule. We plan to do everything we can to make sure these new mandatory home inspections do not violate the rights of people with disabilities and their household members. You can sign up for our email list (just scroll to the black box at the bottom of this page to sign up) to keep up to date on our efforts. We never, ever solicit donations from anyone, and we are 100% self-funded.

2. Attend DODD’s November 7th or 12th webinar on the interRAI rollout. Ask direct questions about the environmental assessment, inspection criteria, and appeal rights.

3. Request the full interRAI assessment tool through DODD’s public records process or directly from interRAI.org.

4. Contact your legislators and demand that DODD be prohibited from conducting home inspections without publishing its inspection criteria, and that any county board or DODD worker who participated in the "greedy, lazy, mental" DEI training be prohibited from working as an assessor. Here's how to find your representatives.

5. Share this information with other families, advocates, and media outlets before the rollout begins. There is still plenty of time to speak up!