Mental Retardation Case Management Services assist individuals and their families in gaining timely access to services and supports that are essential to meeting their basic needs. These services include, but are not limited to, medical; psychiatric; nutritional; social; educational; vocational; employment; housing; economic; transportation; leisure and recreational; legal; advocacy; and any other supports that individuals need to function in a community setting. 

Case management is an intervention which assures that service systems and community supports are maximally responsive to the specific, multiple, and changing needs of individual consumers and families.  It provides a mechanism to facilitate an individual’s progress within service systems, enhance the individual’s potential and quality of life, and assure comprehensive and quality care.

The Case Management recipient is a partner, to the greatest extent possible, in assessing needs; obtaining services, treatments and supports; and in preventing and managing crisis. The individual and the practitioner plan, coordinate, monitor, adjust, and advocate for services and supports directed toward the achievement of the individual’s personal goals for community living.

Case management services may be provided to anyone who is documented to have mental retardation as defined by AAMR (“being substantially limited in present functioning that is characterized by significantly sub-average intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with related limitations in two or more of the following applicable adaptive skill areas:  communication, self-care, home living, social skills, community use, self-direction, health and safety, functional academics, leisure and work, manifested before age 18”).  A child under the age of six years may be considered to have mental retardation as defined by AAMR if there is documented evidence of cognitive and adaptive developmental delay or presence of a syndrome typically associated with mental retardation.

To be eligible for Targeted Case Management, the individual must need "active case management." An individual is considered to need "active case management" if a minimum of one face-to-face contact is required every 90 days. In addition, a minimum of one scheduled or unscheduled contact or communication by the case manager per month with the individual or with the family, service providers, or other organizations on behalf on the individual must typically be needed.

Individuals receiving residential support must be 18 years of age or older and have a primary diagnosis of mental retardation.  Residents may also have other disabilities such as blindness, deafness, mental illness, speech deficits, cerebral palsy, and/or other physical disabilities. Residents must desire to live in the residential setting they are applying for and be able to be safely supervised and supported by the staff to consumer ratio of that residential setting.