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One DSD · People, Access and Culture
MnCHOICES Assessment and Access
Governs how people are assessed for and connected to long-term services and supports.
This learning exercise is optional and does not record your responses. Staff remain responsible for using the current DHS Equity Policy and Equity Analysis Toolkit in their work.
Job families based here: Eligibility and Service Delivery.
Other job families that often help here: Policy and Program Analysis, Community Engagement and Partnership, Communication and Accessibility.
Explore this work context
Where equity shows up first here 4
A likely pattern, not a description of your specific work — MnCHOICES is the assessment and support-planning tool counties, Tribal Nations and managed care organizations use together. It is usually the first place a person's actual circumstances -- language, home situation, what support already exists -- become part of the official record, which is why so much of what happens later depends on how this step goes.
First contact in the person's language
The record shows the first conversation runs through counties, Tribal Nations and managed care organizations before it ever reaches DSD. If that first conversation cannot happen in the language the person actually uses, the assessment that follows is built on whatever the person could get across in a language that was not theirs. This usually belongs under step 3 (engagement) and scan question 2 -- who is being assessed, in what language.
Accessibility of the assessment process
An assessment that is accurate on paper can still be inaccessible in practice -- a format a person cannot use, a setting that does not accommodate how they communicate, a pace set by the tool rather than the person. This usually surfaces in step 4 (benefits, burdens): the burden of being assessed at all.
Person-centered practice and supported decision-making
Whether the person's own goals drive the assessment, or the tool's categories do, is a live question in every assessment. This is usually a step 1 (desired results) question -- whose desired result is actually being recorded.
Wait times and follow-up by community
How long someone waits for an assessment, and whether follow-up happens reliably, is not necessarily even across communities. This usually belongs in step 2 (data) -- disaggregated by community, not only reported as a single average.
Who else is usually involved
County and Tribal lead agencies
Conduct assessments and support planning directly.
Managed care organizations
Use MnCHOICES for their own enrolled members.
Aging and Adult Services
Coordinates related updates through shared aging and disability channels.
MNIT
Provides the technology the assessment tool runs on.
Also touches: Home and community-based services policy and waivers, Support planning and case management, Olmstead and community integration, Training, communication, and strategic communications.
Something here doesn’t match your work?
This page does not know which lead agencies or managed care organizations your work actually touches most, and what the current wait-time picture looks like in practice — nothing here was guessed to fill that in. Telling the consultant is the single most useful thing you can do with it.
Apply the toolkit
The rest of this page is the same for every program area and job family in the Division.
An equity analysis is the point where equity stops being something we believe and becomes something we decide — done before a decision, it changes the decision; done after, it is paperwork.
Which one do I need: an analysis, or a scan?
Answer these two questions about the work in front of you.
- Has this already been through a full equity analysis — and were those results built into the work?
- Is there genuinely not enough time to do a full analysis?
Yes to either An equity scan is the right instrument. Six questions.
No to both A full equity analysis is the right instrument. Eight steps.
A scan is shorter, not lighter: it keeps every element of the full instrument and adds engagement, evidence, accessibility and accountability criteria of its own.
A Tribal Nation may be affected? Stop here — go to Tribal and Urban Indian Relations. Consultation is government-to-government; a community brief is not that door.
The 8 steps of a full equity analysis
- Desired results and outcomes. What are you changing, what do you want to happen, and who could this land on hardest?
- Data. What do the numbers already show about who is affected? What is missing, and how could you get it?
- Engagement. Who is most affected, who have you actually talked to, and what did they tell you?
- Benefits, burdens, and mitigating unintended consequences. Who gains, who carries extra weight, and how could the plan change to reduce harm?
- Equity impact statement. Pull the findings together in one place.
- Accountability, evaluation, and communication. How will you know if it worked, who is responsible, and who hears back?
- Alignment. How does this fit the equity work already under way?
- Sustainability. Is it funded, staffed and resourced to last — including the data and the engagement?
The 6 questions of an equity scan
- What is the desired outcome? What change do you hope to see?
- Define the impacted communities or groups. Be explicit to race and intersecting identities.
- What can you learn from the data? Use disaggregated data — numbers broken out by group, not one total.
- What are the equity impacts of these actions? Who benefits, who is burdened, and how will you reduce harm?
- How have you used what you learned to confirm or change your design?
- How will you communicate results to impacted communities or groups?
Terms on the real form. Disaggregated data — split by group, not one total. Intersecting identities — a person belongs to more than one group at once. Equity impact statement — the written summary in step 5. Kept in the Department's own words on purpose.
The same questions, five kinds of work
It is the same instrument whether the object is a bill, a policy, a program change, a notice, or a class standard.
A bill
Who is impacted?
A funding formula reads as neutral. Split by county and by race and the reach becomes visible.
A policy
What can you learn from the data?
A documentation rule applies equally; whether people can meet it equally is a different question.
A program change
Who benefits, who is burdened?
Moving a service online lifts a burden for some and sets one down for others.
A public notice
How will you communicate results?
A letter that only works in written English decides who can act on it.
A class standard
What is the desired outcome?
A credential the work does not need narrows the field before hiring begins.
See it done: four versions of one decision
The decision, in all four
A waiver program is considering moving annual reassessments from in-person home visits to video calls.
Numbers below are constructed for teaching and marked illustrative — not DHS figures.
“We don’t have that information yet”
This is a legitimate answer — step 2 asks for it directly: what additional data would be helpful, and how could better data be obtained? Naming a gap is stronger than quietly filling the box.
Write it like this: “We do not have this broken out by race. The lead agency case system holds it. Requested; expected [date]; [name] following up.”
When one group sits inside another
A change can look fine for people with disabilities as a group, and fine for Somali Minnesotans as a group, and still fail Somali Minnesotans with disabilities.
Everyone this Division serves has a disability, so every other difference — language, distance, income, race, age — arrives on top of that one.
- Split the data twice: race and region, language and age.
- If numbers get too small to split, say so — that is a finding.
- Ask who would be missed by every category just used.
Minnesota community briefs can help you ask better questions. They do not tell you what an individual needs.
Your working draft
General terms only — no names, case details, or confidential information. Nothing is saved or sent; it disappears on reload.
Clear everything you have written? This cannot be undone.
Where the real toolkit lives
- DHS Equity Policy
- State of Minnesota Equity Analysis Toolkit — a Quick Guide (through DHS)
- The equity scan (through DHS)
- Explore Minnesota community briefs
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Please leave out case, medical, personnel, complaint, and identifying details anywhere in this program. It is not connected to DHS information systems, does not hold DHS case or personnel records, and does not replace decisions made by responsible department offices.