What CDPAP covers, in plain English.

The short version

CDPAP stands for Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, a Medicaid benefit that lets someone who needs care choose their own caregiver — including a spouse, adult child, or close family member — instead of being assigned an aide from an agency roster. The program covers the same hands-on help a traditional home health aide would provide, but it puts the hiring, scheduling, and day-to-day direction in the hands of the person receiving care, or their designated representative.

What's actually on the care plan

Every CDPAP participant gets a care plan built from a nursing assessment. That plan is the rulebook: if a task is listed, it's covered; if it isn't, it can't be billed. In practice, most plans include a mix of:

• Personal care — bathing, grooming, dressing, and toileting
• Mobility support — transfers, walking, and positioning
• Meal preparation and feeding assistance
• Medication reminders, and administration where specifically trained and authorized
• Light housekeeping tied directly to the participant's care, like laundry or changing bedding
• Skilled tasks the caregiver has been trained to perform, such as wound care or tube feeding, once a nurse has signed off

What it doesn't cover

CDPAP isn't a general household budget. It won't pay for rent, groceries for the whole family, home repairs, or transportation that isn't tied to a covered activity. It also doesn't cover 24-hour live-in supervision unless the care plan specifically documents overnight needs and the hours are approved through that channel.

If it's not written into the care plan, we can't authorize payment for it — but almost everything a family is already doing informally turns out to be on that list once we sit down and go through it task by task.

How the hours get decided

A nurse assessor visits, or completes a telehealth assessment, and scores the participant's needs across several categories of daily living. That score converts into a weekly hour allocation. It isn't fixed forever — hours can be reassessed if a health condition changes, which is one of the most common reasons families reach out to their coordinator mid-year.