The Oregon Caregiver SPRING/SUMMER 2024 www.ohca.com 20 PROFILE Corissa Neufeldt, Safety and Regulatory Deputy Director, Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) LEADER Corissa Neufeldt is the safety and regulatory deputy director for the Office of Aging and People with Disabilities within the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS). She has been in public service for nearly 30 years, working at the international, state, and county levels. She has spent the majority of her career working with and advocating for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. What part of your job is the most rewarding? What is the most challenging? The most rewarding experience that I have had throughout my career is just knowing that I have helped somebody. There have been stories and instances that stick with me, and I have lost sleep over, but it is so fulfilling having been able to assist individuals through support, intervention, and access to services that resulted in them being healthy and safe. Seeing struggling providers, who are having a difficult time maintaining their facilities, be successful in helping meet the needs of their residents makes the job worthwhile. The biggest challenge is the mass machinery and strains that comes with working at a government agency. You can come up with a brilliant idea, but by the time you get everything in place that you need to bring the idea to fruition, it can be two or three years later, which can be frustrating. What goals does ODHS have for the upcoming year? What challenges are you facing? My position is a new position, and it was brought on because leadership identified that there needed to be someone who could pay closer attention to the licensing and regulatory work and the adult abuse protection work that we have. My goal in the next year is to update our regulatory rules and policies, and really ensure that we have our best practices in place to ensure the health and safety of residents. These policies need to be reflective of our current mission and values, not values from ten years ago. What is a stigma about working at a government agency that you would like to dispel? That we don’t care about the residents. The myth is that we are just government workers earning a paycheck and we don’t really care about the people in the facilities. That is not at all the case. Everybody has a choice of where they work, and my colleagues and I are choosing to work here because we care. I have chosen this line of work because I care about people, particularly vulnerable and marginalized people, and I can say the same for many of the staff. How do you communicate the importance of home and communitybased services (HCBS) to providers? In Oregon, we have the ability to support vulnerable populations in the community or in their homes. The main thing we have tried to communicate to providers and caretakers is the importance of an individual’s right to make choices, regardless of geography: residents’ rights don’t go away just because they are choosing to receive services, either in their homes or in community settings. This is mainly communicated through the administrative rules and training that all administrators and providers must go through to receive their licenses from the state. What do you think is the biggest positive outcome from the implementation of HCBS? The increased understanding and acceptance that just because you are requiring support doesn’t mean that you don’t have rights and that you don’t have the right to make choices. HCBS is the embodiment of supporting residents in their choices versus directing and projecting your opinions about what somebody should do. It is the difference between what is important to the individual versus what is important for the individual. These might conflict at times, and that is where choice comes into play. HCBS is all about how we support person-centered choices versus projecting our own judgments on people.
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