Can my child have both IHSS and Waiver Personal Care Services (WPCS)?

Waiver personal care services (WPCS) are only available under the HCBA waiver, which is for people who require nursing care and who meet the criteria for admission to a skilled nursing facility so that they can remain in their homes.

WPCS is processed under the same system as IHSS in terms of hiring and entering hours, but the way that the two programs allocate waiver personal care services is a little bit different, and so hours that are authorized under under waiver personal care services might not be authorized under IHSS, and they're totally separate. You could have maximum hours under IHSS and still get waiver personal care services because they're assessed separately.

If you are your child's IHSS parent provider or you hire a third-party provider, you may wonder about the difference between these programs. Public Benefits Specialist Lisa Concoff Kronbeck says, "It doesn't really matter which program the hours are coming from as far as the provider is concerned because it's the same hourly rate, it's the same timesheet, and everything is done the same way." The main difference is that with waiver personal care services, generally, the parent still has to be has to be unable to work, or the parent has to be unable to work full-time in order to be the provider. That didn't change in 2024 like the criteria for IHSS parent providers did.