Early History of wpsa

In early spring of 1989, several State sponsored informational sessions were held for newly established MAPC agencies. During one of these sessions, representatives of ACCESS (Nancy Anderson and Bob Deist) and SAI (Jean Rumachik and Kathy Sadowski) wondered aloud how to have our consumers' interests voiced (and met) as MAPC agencies were vastly outnumbered by home health agencies. The solution seemed to be an organization to voice the needs and interests of our personal care only population.

Kathy began corresponding with Personal Care-Only-Agencies recorded on the State mailing list of MA providers. After receiving positive responses from several of the agencies on this list, Bob, Jean, Kathy and Nancy met at a restaurant in Waukesha to begin planning for the initial meeting of interested agencies.

The first of several meetings was held in the summer of 1990 at the Holiday Inn in Wisconsin Dells. Following this initial meeting, other providers were invited so that attendance included those that held the MAPC license as well as the actual service providers. Out of these meetings, WPSA was born. Marci Brost and Glen Silverberg acted as mentors during the birthing process, adding their expertise and guidance.