What changed

One statewide rulebook for every FMS provider, and a review of all of them

DDS directive D-2026-Self-Determination Program-003 sets sixteen standards every Self-Determination FMS provider must meet, moves all of them under San Diego Regional Center, and starts a compliance review with submissions due 28 November 2026. For families, your rights do not change and you can still switch provider at any time. What changes is that every provider now owes you the same things in writing: a grievance process resolved within 60 days, a plain-language service agreement, monthly budget statements, 60 days' notice before changing or ending your service, and a transfer completed within 60 days if you leave. If your provider falls short in the review, your regional center has to write to you, and we explain what each of the two letters means.

Read what changed

The site opens: 42 glossary terms, the FMS directory, and the tools, all published

Everything that was written behind a DRAFT badge is now public. That is 42 glossary terms, the guide to being told two different things, and Choosing an FMS - the directory of all 29 providers with their DDS-approved burden rates. One guide, Being an employer in California, is deliberately held back until three sections on hiring paperwork, wage statements and ending employment are written, because an employer duties page with missing duties reads as complete when it is not. Nothing was smoothed over to get here: where an entry rests on the waiver application rather than a DDS directive, or describes how a model is run rather than how DDS defines it, the page says so and says what to ask. New today: a Notice of Action entry, built from the DS 1820 form and the DDS mutual consent fact sheet, covering the thing most families do not know - that a letter saying the regional center understood you agreed is not the end of it, and saying you disagree obliges them to issue a notice you can appeal.

Browse the glossary

A fourth reason you get different answers: the provider's own business practice

Sometimes nobody is wrong. The rule allows the thing, and your FMS has decided not to do it, or cannot do it with the systems it has. A provider hires staff on your behalf, becomes an employer of record and pays caregivers and vendors before the money covering them has arrived, so when a payment turns out not to have been properly authorised the provider is often the one who absorbs it. Different providers price that risk differently and give you opposite answers while both being right. The guide now explains this, and why asking a provider why they work the way they do tells you more than the yes or no.

Read the guide

When you are told two different things

Everyone in this program eventually gets two answers to the same question, and it is rarely because someone is lying. A new guide on why it happens, the three different kinds of disagreement it can be - someone is mistaken, it is your planning team's call, or the rule is read differently - and what to do about each. Including why your FMS sometimes cannot pay for something your regional center seemed to approve, and why the fix is usually the spending plan rather than an argument.

Read the guide

A calculator for what an employer burden rate really costs you

Put your own caregivers, wage and hours in, tick the providers you are actually deciding between, and see the difference in hours of care rather than percentages. Sentinel Four stays in every comparison whether it flatters us or not, and ten of the seventeen others are cheaper than we are. For most families it is about 68 hours a year - less than the difference a dollar on the wage makes. For families with several full-time staff it is roughly 400 hours, and the tool says so. Choosing an FMS is a service decision, and the page now leads with that.

Try the calculator

A directory of all 29 FMS providers, and what none of them publish

You can now filter every FMS provider on the DDS list by your regional center and by the model you need, and see the DDS-approved burden rate beside each one. Five service questions that matter most to families - how often caregivers are paid, when vendors are paid, whether you get a named person - are not published by anyone, so they read "not published" for all 29, including us. Providers can send us their answers and we will publish them.

Choosing an FMS

DDS republished the approved FMS employer burden file

Every provider's approved burden rate is public, and this is the file it comes from. Across the eighteen providers offering Co-Employer, rates run 17.23% to 24.86%. If a provider quotes you a number, you can check it.

What employer burden is

SB 163, the 2026 budget trailer bill, was signed

It funds Local Volunteer Advisory Committees at up to $1 million a year through June 2030, for statewide training and local resource fairs. DDS's own briefing says it made no changes to individual budgets or to FMS. Nothing here to act on.

A single new grievance process replaced the old complaint routes

Required of every state by the federal Access Rule. Grievances are now filed with DDS rather than the regional center, which then has 60 days to investigate and respond, and the reviewer cannot be someone involved in the original decision. Forms are in 19 languages. Critically: there is no aid paid pending on a grievance, so if a service is at stake you need an appeal, not a grievance.

Grievance, and when to appeal instead

SCDD became the only provider of SDP orientation statewide

Orientation is now two required two-hour sessions, Part A then Part B, delivered virtually in 11 languages plus ASL. You sign up through SCDD, not your regional center. Anyone who finished orientation before this date, or who is already enrolled, does not repeat it.

Regional centers began contacting participants about waiver enrollment

DDS now sends each regional center a quarterly list of SDP participants not enrolled in the Medicaid waiver, and centers must reach out and help people enroll. If you get that call it is this program-wide push, not something about your case. Worth knowing why: enrolment draws federal funding, and a regional center's own operations funding is partly driven by its enrolment percentage.

What the SDP Waiver is

California's minimum wage rose to $16.90

Up from $16.50, and it is indexed to inflation so it will rise again most Januarys. If you employ someone at or near the floor you must give them that raise — and your individual budget does not rise with it. DDS says such increases are not automatically applied. You can ask for an adjustment, and a minimum wage rise is the example DDS itself uses.

What to do about the January rise

New rules on initial budgets and spending plans

Directive D-2025-SDP-003, still the operative guidance on how a first budget is built. It also confirms that you may move money between service codes and between budget categories at any time during the budget year, with approval — and that when a spending plan changes, the regional center must tell your FMS within three business days.

How a spending plan works

Regional centers must report large budget increases to DDS

Any certified budget that rises by $20,000 or more against the prior year gets reported, with a sample drawn each year. Worth understanding correctly: this is monitoring, and the directive states plainly that it gives DDS no role in approving individual budgets or spending plans.

How individual budgets are set

The SDP Ombudsperson became part of a larger office

SB 471 folded the standalone role into a new Office of the Developmental Services Ombudsperson. Older guidance pointing at an SDP-specific contact is out of date, and a fair amount of material online still does. Note what people contact them about: FMS problems are the single largest complaint category in the program.

What the Ombudsperson does

DDS set out exactly what employer burden may include

The list is closed. Burden is limited to FICA, FUTA, SUTA, Employment Training Tax, workers' compensation and paid sick leave — anything else on your plan is not burden. It also fixed two rules worth knowing: a provider may change their rate only once a year, and a burden increase does not by itself grow your budget.

The six components