Prove Me Wrong

[Developmental Disabilities Advocates]

I am sending out this link to the blog "Because We Care - Beyond
Inclusion" as a response to the Community Advocacy Coalition and the
denial of my application to join.

http://becausewecare1.com/2012/08/09/prove-me-wrong/ Please take the
opportunity to read it and the comments. It may provide some insight
to the situation.

I will be writing to member organizations personally with regards to
the issues that I have raised in this blog posting and also some more
specific issues with regards to the lack of adherence to the
membership criteria for about 45% of the listed member
"organizations".

If you are a member of this coalition, take a look at the agreement
which you needed to sign to be accepted to the coalition. I wrote to
Scott Livengood, Chair of this coalition regarding my inability to
sign the agreement as written given that I support a continuum of care
model. I offered an edited version of the last paragraph, as seen
below, but my membership was rejected by the coalition stating that
the agreement needed to be signed without edits.

Here are my edits that I made to the last paragraph of the membership
agreement:


Many Voices/One Vision

Community Advocacy Coaltion Core Values

Edits

8. People with devleopmental disabilities need support to live in
communities; in affordable houses and communities of their choice as
upheld in the US DD Act and the 1999 US Supreme Court Decision
Olmstead. The individual and their fmaily are the experts I knowing
what is the most appropriate and leaset restrictive environment for
them. One must honor the individual and their choice.

Evidently, the CAC does not value choice and individualized care and
does not practice "nothing about us without us" as they also state in
their core values. This coalition is not friendly to those who
support a continuum of care. This is extremely unfortunate and to not
look at a continuum of care as a model which can provide stability and
sustainability to the system, the crisis and chaos will continue.

I'm not surprised that I was not allowed to join as the owner of my
business organization but I had hoped that things might have changed.
Given that two of the stated purposes of the CAC are to provide a
platform tor advocacy organizations to share information and to
educate one another on issues of mutual concern I offered to make a
presentation to the coalition. I offered to provide a presentation
with current data and thorough research with regards to cost of care,
safety, quality of care and accountability or stability and
sustainability and give the coalition the opportunity to question the
research. I'm sorry that I was not taken up on this offer to present
critical information and to hear their concerns regarding the accurate
data.