Community Trust’s beneficiaries include both young and old, married and unmarried, persons living in the community and persons living in nursing homes, assisted living, group homes and other congregate arrangements. Since the founding of Community Trust in 2014, we have served as trustee for more than 3,000 trusts. Most, but not all, of our beneficiaries reside Massachusetts.
Community Trust works with many kinds of professionals to build a network of support for our beneficiaries, including legal counsel, Social Workers, home care agencies, long-term care facilities, assisted living communities and many others. We also work with financial advisors and institutions to provide professional trustee services for families with disabled family members. As a non-profit, we have no minimum trust amounts to prevent us from offering expert trustee services to families of limited means.
Our special expertise is to know and understand the labyrinthine world of public benefits, including Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security Disability Income (SSDI), public housing, the Food Stamps program, and Veterans Benefits, as these relate to the formation and use of Special Needs Trusts. If we don’t know the answer to a question, we know how to get it.
Community Trust also has Social Workers on staff—our Clinical Relationship Coordinators—with decades of experience, who meet and get to know the people for whom we serve as trustee. Their job is to communicate what they learn, so to guide the decisions of our Trust Administrators with knowledge of the conditions of our beneficiaries, and compassion for their needs. We do not provide clinical services, but we actively refer beneficiaries to private case managers and other care providers who do. Our Coordinators offer extensive expertise in bringing clinical knowledge to bear on the financial and purely administrative duties of a professional trustee.
The benefits that Community Trust is able to provide through its separate trust accounts are as varied as the individuals we serve. Benefits for each beneficiary are provided through the excess assets that he or she puts in trust. (No one benefits from the funds of any other beneficiary.) Community Trust presently administers trust accounts for more than 800 beneficiaries through its combined programs, with over $60M under management.
A few of the more common types of expenditures are:
1. Telephone and cable TV service
2. Companionship Support
3. Chair car and other transportation
4.Clothing, toiletries andother personal items.
5. Denture replacement and non-medical dental care
6. Hearing aids, podiatry, and alternative therapies
7. Fiduciary, social work and legal expenses
8. Recreation and social activities
For a more comprehensive list of the kinds of support that a trust can provide, please go to Uses of Disability Trusts.
