PCA: Beware the agency's recertification process

I'm hoping to persuade my wife to write up the relevant material, but I wanted to get something out quickly. It if can save one person some hassle ...

Earlier I wrote about: The Personal Care Attendant: things I wish I'd known. We've learned some other things which I'm going to summarize quickly here:

1. The agencies that manage PCA services for the state have to recertify yearly. It turns out some agencies are very bad at doing this. If they fail to recertify on time the best thing that happens is you lose your services instantly -- without warning. The worst thing that happens is you find out 6 months later that the agency didn't recertify. In this case the family may owe the state the money. Lesson: Assume the worst, track the recertification process.
2. The state of Minnesota provides free legal services for disability related work. Isn't that nice to know? This is very valuable in the case of #1.
   

We'll see how this goes. Fortunately we can work with lawyers and we have an excellent state representative, who's office we will engage if we need to.

Years ago I considered retaining a special needs attorney simply as an expert consultant. The attorney I interviewed was excellent, but quite expensive. I suspect I probably should have spent the money, but I'm looking forward to learning what the state funded disability law services are like.