If a case manager has handed you a choice between Integrated Community Supports (ICS) and Individualized Home Supports (IHS), you have probably tried to work out which one provides more help.
That is the wrong question. Both can be intensive, both can be light. The line Minnesota actually draws between them is not about need at all.
It is about who controls the housing.
The distinction in one sentence
DHS defines ICS as support and training for adults who live in a living unit of a provider-controlled setting. If the provider does not own, operate, or lease the home — and has no direct or indirect financial interest in it — then the same support is called individualized home supports instead.
Same kind of help. Different address, legally speaking.
Once you see it that way, a lot of confusing advice falls into place. A provider offering "ICS apartments" is offering housing and services together. A provider offering IHS is coming to the home you already have.
What ICS actually is
ICS is a Medical Assistance service that became available on the CADI and Brain Injury waivers in 2021, and on the Developmental Disabilities and Community Alternative Care waivers in 2023. It was created to fill a gap: DHS describes it as sitting in the service continuum between a person living in their own home and more restrictive settings such as group homes and assisted living.
In practice it means an apartment, in a regular community building, with support built around four areas:
- Community participation
- Health, safety and wellness
- Household management
- Adaptive skills
A few details worth knowing before you picture it:
- It is for adults 18 and over.
- The setting has to be approved by DHS specifically for ICS — a 245D license alone is not enough. The provider needs both.
- An ICS setting has a minimum of three living units. It is not a single house.
- Legally, an ICS setting does not count as the person's own home, nor as a community residential or family residential program. It is its own category.
- Choosing it is voluntary. A person can choose ICS; nobody can be placed into it as the only option.
Trying to work out which of these fits your family member? We talk this through with families regularly — free, no obligation, and we will tell you plainly if neither is the right fit. Call 612-416-8555.
What Individualized Home Supports actually is
IHS supports a person in their own home or their family's home. The housing is theirs; the provider simply shows up to it.
Minnesota licenses it in three forms:
- Individualized home supports — the base service.
- Individualized home supports with training — adds skill-building aimed at gaining, keeping, and improving the ability to live in the community.
- Individualized home supports with family training — for people living with family, where the training goes to the family members as well as the person.
That third variant is the one families overlook most often, and it is frequently the one they actually want. If a parent or sibling is doing much of the daily support and wants to get better at it rather than hand it over, there is a funded service for exactly that.
So which one should you ask for?
Reframe the question as a housing decision and it gets much easier to answer:
Does the person want to move into an apartment where support comes with the building? That is ICS. It suits someone who wants their own place, is not getting there alone, and would benefit from staff on site in the same building.
Does the person already have somewhere to live — their own place, or with family — and need support delivered there? That is IHS. It suits someone whose housing is settled and whose housing they want to keep.
One practical consequence worth understanding: ICS is tied to the setting, IHS travels with the person. If someone in an ICS apartment moves out, the ICS service does not follow them to the new address — the service was approved for that building. IHS follows the person, because the person's home is wherever they live.
That asymmetry matters if a move is on the horizon for any reason.
How the choice actually gets made
Neither service starts because you asked for it by name. Both run through the assessment and support planning process: a MnCHOICES assessment, then a support plan developed with your case manager that names the services approved. If you have that visit coming up, what to expect at a MnCHOICES assessment is worth reading first, because what you describe there shapes what gets written down.
Most people reaching either service are on the CADI waiver, which has its own eligibility requirements on top of the assessment.
One thing to ask your case manager early: is there ICS capacity in your county right now? DHS reviews ICS capacity county by county every quarter, and availability genuinely varies by where you live. If an ICS apartment is what you want, the question of whether one is open near you is worth asking before you build a plan around it — not after.
If you are weighing these two
Midway Homes Adult Care LLC is a Minnesota 245D-licensed provider offering both ICS supportive housing and Individualized Home Supports across Ramsey, Hennepin, Dakota, Scott, Washington, Chisago, and Pine counties, for adults on the CADI, BI, DD, CAC, and Elderly waivers.
Because we provide both, we have no reason to push you toward one. Call 612-416-8555 for a free assessment and we will walk through which fits — including when the honest answer is that another provider or another service is the better match.