The CADI (Community Access for Disability Inclusion) waiver is a Minnesota Medicaid program that pays for a wide range of services designed to help people with disabilities live in the community rather than in institutional settings. It covers everything from daily personal care and home modifications to employment support and transition costs when moving out of a facility. The waiver serves disabled individuals under age 65 who meet Medical Assistance income and asset requirements.
Daily Living and In-Home Support
A large share of CADI spending goes toward helping people manage everyday tasks at home. Homemaker services cover cleaning, home management, and hands-on help with activities of daily living like bathing, dressing, and meal preparation. Adult day services, including family adult day services, provide structured daytime programming and supervision outside the home. For people who need overnight monitoring, the waiver also funds night supervision services.
Respite care gives primary caregivers a temporary break. It can be provided in the person’s home or in another approved setting, and it covers both planned and occasional relief so caregivers can rest, handle personal needs, or travel.
Residential and 24-Hour Support
CADI waiver services can be delivered in several living arrangements: a person’s own home, a family home, a foster care home (family or corporate), a board and lodging facility, or an assisted living facility. One of the waiver’s most significant benefits is customized living, which bundles health-related and supportive services tailored to each resident’s needs. This is the funding mechanism behind most assisted living placements under CADI.
For people who require round-the-clock oversight, the waiver pays for 24-hour customized living. To qualify, you need an assessed need for at least one intensive support such as cognitive or behavioral intervention. One important rule: if you receive customized living or 24-hour customized living, you cannot also receive adult foster care as a separate waiver service.
Home and Vehicle Modifications
The waiver pays for physical changes to your home and vehicle that make independent living possible. Home modifications include ramp installation, grab bars, widened doorways, bathroom and kitchen remodeling, specialized electrical or plumbing systems for medical equipment, shatterproof windows, accessibility flooring, and alarm systems to meet fire and life safety codes.
Vehicle modifications are equally broad: door widening, roof extensions, wheelchair lifts and securing devices, adapted seating, handrails, and grab bars. Notably, there is no dollar cap on these environmental accessibility benefits in the CADI waiver, though each request requires medical necessity documentation, prior authorization, and competitive bids. Repairs to previously installed modifications are also covered.
Employment Services
Three employment-related services are available through the CADI waiver, all focused on helping people find and keep community-based jobs.
- Employment exploration helps you figure out whether and where you want to work. This can include visiting businesses, job shadowing, trying a task alongside someone already doing the job, and learning how employment affects your benefits.
- Employment development helps you actually land a position or start a business. It covers resume building, job matching, and interview preparation and attendance.
- Employment support provides ongoing assistance once you’re working, helping you stay successful in your role over time.
Transition From an Institution to the Community
If you’re moving from a qualifying institutional setting into your own home or an integrated community supports setting, the waiver covers one-time transition costs. These include essential furniture (bed frame, mattress, dining table and chairs, dressers, lamps, sofas), household supplies (cleaning products, dishes, flatware, pots and pans, sheets, towels), window coverings, lease or rental deposits, and moving expenses like truck rental and packing.
For transitions starting on or after January 1, 2025, the total cap is $5,000 per move. Within that, essential furniture is capped at $1,500 and moving expenses at $5,000. You can use this benefit once every three years.
Transition services explicitly do not cover clothing, food, recreational items (televisions, computers, DVD players, cable), rent or mortgage payments, or items that duplicate other waiver services you’re already receiving.
Specialist and Crisis Services
CADI funds behavioral support services for people who need therapeutic intervention to manage challenging behaviors. This can include training in coping skills, socialization, self-advocacy, and strategies to reduce stressors before they escalate into a crisis. Crisis respite is available as a short-term stabilization service, either in the person’s home or in a supervised out-of-home setting, depending on clinical need.
Consumer-Directed Option
Rather than receiving traditional waiver services, you can opt into Consumer Directed Community Supports (CDCS). This gives you an individualized annual budget based on your assessed needs, and you decide how to spend it on allowable goods and services. Your lead agency reviews and approves your spending plan, and the budget represents a maximum, so final approved amounts may be lower than the cap if your projected costs come in under it.
CDCS budgets cannot pay for background studies, required case management, or certain home modification and assistive technology assessments. Everything else in the budget must tie back to an assessed need documented in your community support plan.
What the Waiver Does Not Cover
Room and board is the most significant exclusion. The CADI waiver does not pay rent, mortgage payments, or the cost of food and shelter, regardless of your living arrangement. Clothing, recreational electronics, and any item that duplicates a service already available through another waiver benefit are also excluded. Standard Medical Assistance services that you’re already entitled to outside the waiver (like physician visits or prescription drugs) are billed separately and not drawn from your waiver allocation.
Eligibility Requirements
To qualify for the CADI waiver, you must be under 65 with a qualifying disability and meet the state’s institutional level of care criteria, meaning you would otherwise need the kind of care provided in a hospital or nursing facility. The asset limit is $3,000 for a single-person household, with no asset limit for children under 21. Your income must fall at or below 100% of the federal poverty guidelines. If your income exceeds that threshold, you can still qualify by “spending down” to 75% of the federal poverty level, which means paying the difference between your income and the threshold toward your cost of care before waiver funding kicks in.