This weekend the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar opened outside for it’s pandemic safe debut. ADAPT’s Wheelchair Santa Clones were there at the gate, collecting donations and signatures on our Support the Build Back Better bill and passing out information on disability rights. Shortened hours and less days were welcome changes for our stalwart crew of Clones — as we ease our way back into “the new normal.”
Want to help collect signatures you can send to our Senators? Click here for a copy of the petition.
To prepare this you will need $150 billion for Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) sprinkled with $ 150 billion for Affordable, Accessible, Integrated, Housing. Spread these ingredients throughout the community and allow to settle in.
Once these funds have been infused in the community; they are ready to be used to:
Expand HCBS in Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act throughout to increase access, quality, and uniformity nationwide.
Support the Recruitment and Retention of Community Attendants
Increase payment rates in a manner that offers attendants a “living wage.”
Expand affordable, accessible, integrated housing development and rent subsidy programs targeting low- and moderate-income people with disabilities, especially people who receive HCBS services.
Expand access to accessible home modifications programs to enable people to leave or avoid institutional settings thus saving millions of health care dollars.
And to ensure that your recipe is a success, make the program Money Follows the Person permanent.
This recipe will help more people be Home for The Holidays!
ADAPT took to the streets on November 8th to call for Senator Cornyn’s support for the BBB, Build Back Better, bill currently going through Congress. National ADAPT has gone to Washington DC twice now and is headed there for a third trip to support this important legislation, and ADAPT of Texas members have gone each time. Locally however, we went to Cornyn’s office building and picketed and leafletted over 400 flyers outside. One of the building staff came out to talk with us and arranged a meeting with his staff so three of our members went in to talk with Cornyn’s staff for about 45 minutes asking for his support of the bill. Build Back Better includes increased funding for community services, it includes: • making Money Follows the Person permanent (right now it has to be reauthorized again and again), • better wages for attendants, • addressing the SUBminimum wage wages many people with disabilities work for, • increased funding for very affordable housing, • along with a host of other import human infrastructure. IF you haven’t already, please contact your US Senators and tell them you want them to support disability supportive legislation like this. Not sure how to get in touch? No problem! Click here. We will be returning soon to see what progress his staff have made on his support for any of these issues. For more information on the terrific national actions in DC go to:
Then on December 9th, with many of our members again joining National ADAPT in DC, ADAPT of Texas returned to picket Senator Cruz’s office when his staff refused to talk with us. Then they marched across downtown back to Senator Cornyn’s office to face another set of cold shoulders; his staff also refused to meet. But the action was not a bust as media came to cover the action (click here to see one story we got) and both offices knew why we were there, leaflets were passed out and our call for their support of Build Back Better was heard across downtown Austin.
ADAPT continued the push for BBB in Austin as well as DC!
Above: Ron and Bob holding BBB signs for the Austin Action
Left: BBB action signs displayed in front of ADAPT’s newly rebuilt 10 foot wheelchair.
Disgusted with Texas’ Health and Human Services Commission’s lack of interest in the attendants who are the back bone of long term services and supports, PACT and ADAPT members took action on October 22.
Since previous communication had been ignored, the group took along a giant letter listing our concerns. HHSC, we had learned, had never bothered to bring up the need for higher wages for community attendants during the special sessions this summer. We already knew they hadn’t included anything about better wages during the regular legislative session, not even putting it in their exceptional items in their budget request.
During the summer, when states were submitting requests to the federal Health and Human Services Dept. for pandemic related funds, Texas had not put in a mention of attendants, and had purposefully avoided getting input from the public – something the feds had recommended but not required. Members of their Direct Services Workforce Group, which was alegedly set up to advise on such matters, were not even asked for advice. Over half the members including all the consumer group representatives and some providers were so disgusted with HHSC’s lack of interest in the issue they resigned en masse in August.
We also brought a giant syringe (designed and made by the creative Eli R.C.) to show the need for better COVID protections for community attendants. All through the pandemic PACT and ADAPT have been mailing out masks to attendants and folks who use attendant services; we arranged a mask and sanitizer give away with Austin Public Health for attendants and attendant service agencies; we arranged for vaccines for attendants and those who use these services along with Austin Public Health and the Housing Authority of the City of Austin. HHSC seems to have done absolutely nothing for these direct care workers who provided these critical services, basically at their own risk, for over a year.
Unbeknownst to us, HHSC had snuck across the street from their old location, but we quickly regrouped and tracked them down. We took over the lobby of their fancy new offices and the Executive Commissioner Cecile Young, too chicken to come down herself, sent a staffer who after listening finally agreed to set up a meeting with Ms. Young.
Security escorted us out of the building once we were done, tsk tsking us as went. But shortly thereafter, as we were debriefing outside, one security woman came out to thank us as she works as an attendant in a group home for her other job and completely agreed with everything we said.
We will be meeting with Executive Commissioner very soon!
Nancy, Nicky and Jay get ready for march to HHSC HQ.
Cathy displays props for the action
Protesters with signs assemble for action at HHSC in Oct.
ADAPT members pose before the Capitol at the start of their overnight vigil to call for Congress to include funding for attendant services in the Build Back Better Budget Reconciliation bill.
Supporters of attendants, consumers of attendant services and supports, friends and allies are holding a 24 hour vigil in front of the US Capitol to call attention to the critical need to fund these services better. These services as well as truly affordable, accessible housing are on the chopping block as Congress debates a compromise for the bill. Vigil participants are reading stories from folks affected by the current crisis in attendant services who could not travel to DC, sharing their own personal stories, songs and more.
Thurs, Oct 7 from 6-7 pm Eastern time (5 – 6 pm central/Austin time and 4-5 pm mountain/El Paso time) there is a closing ceremony.
The event is co-hosted by ACLU, ADAPT, The Arc of the United States, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, AAPD, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Be A Hero, Care Can’t Wait Coalition, Caring Across Generations, Little Lobbyists, Justice in Aging, National Council on Independent Living, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Council on Aging, National Health Law Program, and SEIU.
13 Texas ADAPT activists joined hundreds of activists from around the country in Washington DC to highlight the need for the BCBJ Act to include the $400 billion for Home and Community Services and accessible affordable integrated housing .
Yesterday (10/6/21) ADAPT of Texas and other ADAPT members were arrested at the Hart Building trying to get meeting with Senators Manchin and Sinema.
Back here in Texas, our legislature is back in another special session to decide how to send federal dollars sent to the states to help in these crisis times. Of course the critical lack of attendants appears to be invisible to them. Their budget committees held one day of hearings each (with minimal notice). They seem to not believe their is a need for attendants, that attendants need to make a living wage, and that these issues impact Texans with disabilities. You can help by contacting your state Senator and state Representative click here to find out who they are and how to reach them.
People are spending the night in their wheelchairs, and getting bedsores from it. They are being forced to think about moving into nursing homes, and worse. Why? The critical shortage of attendants! One of the main causes is the piss poor wages our stingy state allows. When you can make almost twice the hourly wage flipping burgers at fast food joints, packing boxes at Amazon, and similar jobs, and when attendant wages won’t pay the rent or put food on the table, why does anyone stay in this job? More and more, they don’t.
So add your voice to the call for better wages for our attendants, so we can keep having community attendant services programs in this state. And do it today.
This week is disability voter registration week (which of course is really pretty much year round.) The disability voting project REV UP Texas and Register 2 Vote have made a handy tool for you!
If you aren’t registered to vote, or you need to update information for your voter registration, like if you have moved, use the QR code below or click here and it takes you to a site where you can register to vote or update your info. You will be mailed a stamped, addressed postcard with all your info filled in and you just need to sign it and stick it in the mail. Share with friends, cohorts, etc.
Just point your phone camera at this picture and website pops up!
If you don’t think your vote counts, ask yourself why people are trying to make it harder to vote.
Want to find out more about Registering Educating yourself on the issues Voting and Using your Power? (REV UP Texas) click here.
Nicky Boyte joins with Travis County Commissions to receive 2021 Voter Registration proclamation.
Here is a video of testimony given for the Labor Day event. We are getting calls at our office from people whose hours have been cut because there aren’t enough attendants available to cover their hours.
The link below is a power point presentation on the issue.
SUBJECT: Community Attendants Demand $15 per hour, Health Benefits and Respect for their Essential Work
WHO: Personal Attendant Coalition of Texas (PACT) ADAPT of Texas * Statewide grassroots disability rights organization advocating for the integration of people with disabilities of all ages.
WHAT: A Labor Day Virtual Event highlighting the DEMANDS of Community Attendants to the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and the Texas Legislature.
There is a crisis in recruiting and retaining Community Attendants. People with disabilities and older Texans need Community Attendants to allow them to live in the community and Age in Place.
COMMUNITY ATTENDANTS ARE ESSENTIAL WORKERS
BUT GET LITTLE RECOGNITION OR RESPECT.
The base wage rate is $8.11 with no health benefits. The 87th Legislature did not appropriate any money to raise the base rate. HHSC has documented the need for Community Attendants however their latest request for federal funds did little to alleviate the crisis in recruiting and retaining Community Attendants. HHS has done nothing to protect attendants from COVID-19.
PACT/ADAPT of Texas will offer possible solutions at this event.
As cases swell dangerously here in Texas with the new D strain of COVID, ADAPT of Texas urges people with disabilities and their families and friends to get vaccinated. In you can’t get out of your home to go to a vaccination site, now the shot can come to you!
Homebound Texans can call 844-90-TEXAS (844-908-3927) and select Option 1 to request a state mobile vaccination team to come to their home.
June 22nd is the 22nd Anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1999 landmark Olmstead decision.
ADAPT of Texas, a statewide disability rights organization, is celebrating this anniversary which we fought so hard to see. “Freedom, Liberation, Integration and Independence” are how ADAPT of Texas members describe the Olmstead decision.
Based on the integration requirement in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Olmstead decision said that people with disabilities have the right to live in “the most integrated setting.” Just because a person needs support services does not mean the state can closet them away in nursing homes, state developmental disability (known in Texas as State Supported Living Centers) or other institutions.
Lois Clark and Elaine Wilson were two Georgia women who had sat in institutions for years waiting on wait-lists for community services. They sued saying the state was paying for them to be stuck in institutions and could therefore afford to provide them services in the community.
Though they were from Georgia, they could well have been from Texas as thousands of Texans were, and many still are, in this same situation.
In Texas, ADAPT fought for and in part using the Olmstead decision, won a policy called Money Follows the Person which has led to thousands of Texans getting out of nursing homes, and some state supported living centers and moving back into the communities they came from.
President George W Bush, with a push from ADAPT, took the experience in Texas and carried it forward to the national level. Though Medicaid still has an “institutional bias,” people with disabilities of all ages now have a choice to live in the community with the supports and services they need.
We still have more work ahead as there are over 100,000 Texans waiting in the community for services and supports; however, we should celebrate the victories along the way.
