Around 4,300 Kansans with intellectual and developmental disabilities are waiting for a Medicaid waiver slot, and the typical wait runs close to nine years. On July 9, Governor Laura Kelly announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had approved a second waiver designed to shorten that line. It opens with 500 slots on October 1.

The Community Supports Waiver is a new 1915(c) home and community based services waiver, approved by CMS on July 1 alongside an amendment to the state's KanCare managed care waiver. Both take effect October 1, 2026. CMS signed off on a projected enrollment of 500 people for the first waiver year, which runs through September 30, 2027.

What the New Waiver Pays For

The Community Supports Waiver is built for Kansans who need help but do not need round-the-clock support. Services carry an annual cap of $20,000 per participant, and the waiver does not cover day services or residential services. Those remain on the comprehensive I/DD Waiver, the program that 9,399 Kansans currently use and that everyone on the waiting list is waiting for.

A $20,000 ceiling funds a meaningful package of in-home supports for a person whose needs are steady and moderate. It does not fund a residential placement, and it will not stretch to cover a situation that changes for the worse.

Eligibility follows the state's existing I/DD rules. An applicant must be at least five years old, have an intellectual disability that began before age 18 or a developmental disability that began before age 22, meet the institutional level of care threshold on the state's functional eligibility instrument, and qualify financially through the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Participants must use at least one waiver service each month to stay enrolled.

The Trade-Off Buried in the Enrollment Rules

Here is the part that will not appear in a press release. The Community Supports Waiver has no waiting list of its own, but it does have a queue, and the queue is ordered by how long an applicant has already spent on the I/DD Waiver waitlist. KDADS processes applications from people currently on that waitlist first, then everyone else. Once the 500 slots fill, the agency stops processing applications until capacity opens.

Enrolling costs you your place in that queue. A person who moves from the I/DD waitlist onto the Community Supports Waiver gives up the waitlist position they have been holding, and someone who later needs the comprehensive waiver cannot move back directly. They rejoin the waitlist at the bottom unless they qualify through crisis or reserved capacity.

For a family eight years into a nine year wait, that is a real decision with real arithmetic behind it. For a family two years in, with a child whose support needs are stable and modest, $20,000 a year starting this fall looks different than seven more years of nothing. The state is counting on the second group taking slots, which is what KDADS Secretary Laura Howard described when she said the waiver will help people needing lower level supports get services faster and reduce the waiting list for the comprehensive program. Five hundred slots against roughly 4,300 people waiting means the order of the line, and who steps out of it, determines who benefits.

What Kansas Families Should Do Before October

Start with your local Community Developmental Disability Organization. Kansas has 27 CDDOs, one assigned to each county, and the CDDO is the entry point for both waivers. They determine program eligibility, conduct or arrange the functional assessment, and are required to tell every eligible applicant about their right to choose home and community based services over an institutional placement. If your family is not yet on the I/DD waitlist at all, getting screened now establishes the tenure that governs where you land in the waiver queue.

Then pull your current numbers before you weigh the offer. Ask your CDDO for your waitlist enrollment date and your most recent functional assessment score. Those two facts tell you where you sit in the priority order and whether your assessed needs fit inside a $20,000 annual budget. A family whose child is approaching a transition, whether that is aging out of school services or a parent's own health changing, is weighing a different question than a family whose situation has held steady for years.

Applications can be submitted at any time, and the state has said KDADS and KDHE are now working through provider enrollment, system updates, and policy development ahead of the October start. Kansas publishes waiver details and updates at kdads.ks.gov, and questions about the Community Supports Waiver go to the state's dedicated CSW team.

While the enrollment machinery gets built, the services you already qualify for do not require a waiver slot. Medicaid state plan services, school based supports under an IEP, and county and nonprofit programs all operate outside the waiver system, and families on long waitlists frequently find that some of what they need is available while they wait.

Advocates in Kansas have pushed for a four year plan that would take the I/DD waiting list to zero by 2029, with the Community Supports Waiver scaling to roughly 1,500 people over three years. October's 500 slots are the first third of that, and the state has to prove the model works before the legislature funds the rest. The families who take a slot this fall will be the evidence, which is why the CDDO conversation about your assessment score and your waitlist date is worth having before the queue starts moving in October.