September 22, 2015 is National Voter Registration Day, the only one day there will be coordinated field, technology, and media efforts to create awareness of voter registration. This is important for the disability community because in 2008 there were an estimated 6 million people who did not vote because they missed a registration deadline or did not know how to register. With a major election coming up on November 8, 2016, we need to make sure that the voice of people with disabilities is heard loudly.

So what can you do?

• Register voters that come into your Center for Independent Living.
• Hold a voter registration drive in your area. Partner with other nonprofits to increase the number of individuals you reach.
• A lot of voters need to register or reregister every year. This will provide an opportunity for you to educate the community of about your Center for Independent Living.

You can go to nationalvoterregistrationday.org to find out more.

The National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) and Portlight Strategies (Portlight), national disability stakeholder organizations, today issued the following statement commemorating the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina:

“Ten years ago Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, taking hundreds of lives, upending thousands of others and ravaging communities. People with disabilities died and were harmed in disproportionate numbers. This week NCIL and Portlight are commemorating all those impacted by Katrina (especially people with disabilities), honoring the resilience of the survivors, acknowledging the failures which exacerbated the human toll, and recognizing important steps made in the last ten years to ensure that people with disabilities are better served in future disasters and are intimately involved in the planning and execution of those efforts.”

“NCIL and Portlight have both worked over the last ten years to identify institutional and systemic failures which led to the deaths, displacement and anguish of people with disabilities resulting from Hurricane Katrina. We have worked TOGETHER, in a spirit of community, to create and nurture effective solutions, encourage emergency management institutions and organizations to take our issues seriously, and to build meaningful relationships between people with disabilities and our stakeholder organizations and those whose jobs it is to serve us in disaster situations.”

In the last ten years, a number of initiatives have been instituted by NCIL and Portlight as the result of lessons learned from the Katrina experience. These efforts are bearing tangible positive fruit for people with disabilities and include:

• Establishment of the NCIL Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee – This subcommittee meets monthly to compare notes, share best practices, review problematic issues and strategize advocacy and solutions.
• Portlight has created a deployable shelter accessibility module that contains a wide variety of tools and equipment is made available to shelter operators to help ensure safe and accessible shelters
• NCIL / American Red Cross Memorandum of Understanding
• Portlight / American Red Cross Memorandum of Understanding
• NCIL / Portlight Memorandum of Understanding
• NCIL / FEMA Memorandum of Agreement
• Portlight / FEMA Memorandum of Agreement

These Memoranda have created a solid foundation of respect and cooperation between disability community stakeholder organizations and emergency management organizations upon which is being built a solid infrastructure of solutions. These agreements are the crucial manifestation of the critical importance of community building and relationship building in addressing and solving issues involving people with disabilities.  [Read more…]

By Jan Derry, Co-Chair of Violence and Abuse Subcommittee

At NCIL’s Annual Meeting on July 29, 2015, the NCIL membership voted to adopt the resolution that was submitted by the Violence and Abuse Subcommittee. This resolution recognized that violence and abuse against individuals with disabilities occurs at a much higher rate than for individuals without disabilities. It also recognized that Adult Protective Services, APS, is often the first responder to reports of abuse, neglect and exploitation and that the current structure of APS creates inconsistencies on types of abuse responded to, the population it protects, who is required to report, and the types of response varies from state to state. These inconsistencies can put the victim in further danger and it can result in the victim being re-victimized by the service system charged with protecting them.

The resolution calls for a national model of APS that will eliminate confusion, fear and mistrust; that will embrace a trauma informed response to abuse to serve victims with respect and compassion.

In October of 2014, the Administration on Community Living created the Office of Elder Justice and Adult Protective Services, becoming the first Federal “home” for APS. Consistent with the resolution adopted by the membership, NCIL began its collaboration with ACL to address concerns regarding the historical experiences of people with disabilities as they interact with APS.

On August 5^th, Kelly Buckland, NCIL’s Executive Director and Jan Derry, Co-Chair of NCIL’s Violence and Abuse Subcommittee, joined a round table discussion held at ACL to learn of ACL’s current investments in APS in to building a National APS Resource Center, to learn about the proposed Voluntary Consensus Guidelines for state APS systems, the 10 state grants to enhance APS, and to join with other disability leaders to share what we know about the strengths and weaknesses of the current systems.

From July 13-October 30, 2015, ACL is launching a stakeholder engagement and outreach strategy to refine and finalize the draft “Voluntary Consensus Guidelines for State APS Systems”. The goals of the Guidelines are to provide a core set of principles and common expectations to encourage consistency in the policies and practices across the county; to help ensure that adults are afforded similar protections and services delivery, regardless of which state they are in; and to enhance effective, efficient and culturally competent delivery both of services to the victim and responses to perpetrators. These will be voluntary guidelines and not standards nor regulations.

Now ACL needs to hear from you!

ACL is hosting a number of virtual listening sessions via conference calls. ACL will host both open sessions and targeted professional stakeholder sessions. See the attached information for how to join the listening sessions. Each session is limited to 75 callers, thus registration is required. You may also view and provide comments on the draft guidelines electronically.

Example comments:

• The caseload of APS workers should be reasonable so they can move at a reasonable pace.
• We must ensure that all APS staff members are trained in cultural competency in working with people with disabilities, including communication, general awareness training, disability-specific, providing reasonable accommodations, assistive technology, barriers to reporting and unintended consequences, trauma-based interviewing, consumer directed service delivery systems, etc.
• APS should use people with disabilities who are active in the disability community as the experts in the field.
• The position of APS should be elevated within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the same level and pay as Child Protective Services (CPS).
• Please standardize definitions of who should receive the protections and services provided by APS regardless of state or jurisdiction they are in.
• APS should be able to provide consistent timelines for investigations.
• Please define the scope of authority of guardianship.
• Data should be maintained regarding the prevalence of investigations and outcomes specific to people with disabilities.

Lets’ make sure our voices are heard! If we don’t comment, then we can’t complain about what the final guidelines end up being. NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US!

Source: The Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement, Drake University

It’s Iowa State Fair time! The Harkin Institute is excited to share with you a special exhibit that will visit the fair: America’s Disability Rights Museum on Wheels. This traveling museum tells the story of the fight for equal rights by people with disabilities in the United States, curated by the producers of the national recognized documentary Lives Worth Living. The museum raises awareness of the 25^th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

• Thursday, August 20: 11:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• Friday, August 21: 9:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• Location: 2015 Iowa State Fair (open to the public)  – Gate 11 Entrance at the West Grand Exhibit Area

Iowa’s own retired Senator Tom Harkin will be at the museum on Friday, August 21, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. He would love to have you stop by and visit this exhibit.

In order for people with disabilities to be seen as an important voting bloc, we need to do three things:

1. We all have to be like old-fashioned “block captains”. We need to deliver voters to the polls. As advocates, it’s not enough for us to individually register and vote, we need to take responsibility and be sure that everyone we know who shares our independent living values is registered and votes.
2. It is essential that this be done in primary elections. The voter participation rate of people with disabilities has been increasing in general election. Regretfully, our voter participation rate in primaries is dismal and in some cases worse than the general public. Primary elections set the agenda that will be debated in the general election. The tea party is a clear example of the importance of primary elections. A relatively small number of committed and organized voters defeated incumbents in primary elections. This got the attention of candidates across the nation and changed our public debate. There is a strategic advantage for an organized bloc of voters in primary elections: it takes very few votes to win a primary and many more to win a general election. Go to your local election office website and look at the past few elections’ notes and see how few votes it took to win the primary. Every election campaign begins by looking at the regular primary voters – these are the voters that the candidates court, speak to, and listen to.
3. People with disabilities should run for public office. We often say “nothing about us without us”, yet as a community we don’t carry this forward to elections. Candidates form coalitions of voters so they can win a primary election. We form coalitions all the time, but it is only to support or oppose legislative or regulatory changes. Why are we not forming coalitions to elect: articulate, bright, and committed advocates to town and city councils, state legislatures and executive office? What better way is there to be at the table then as an elected official? Running for office is a complex process, but there is an easy way to learn what campaigns are like from the inside – volunteer for the candidate of your choice. Nonprofit employees can volunteer for candidates and run for office if they do it on their own time. George Holman is the Executive Director of the Rockland County Independent Living Center in New York State. But, he is also an elected member of the Rockland Town Council. From this vantage point, he has been able to move the disability agenda in major ways in the community he lives in.

There is power in voting and by doing these 3 things you can influence how we are seen and live. If you want to learn more about getting out the vote, please attend the Voting Rights Subcommittee’s presentation at NCIL’s 2015 Annual Conference on Independent Living.