ANCOR August Advocacy Challenge – Witness Providers in Action!

August is an important advocacy month because that is when members of Congress return to their districts for a full month to connect with their constituents. ANCOR’s Grassroots Work Group seized this opportunity by hosting the ANCOR August Advocacy Challenge, encouraging advocates to reach out to their members of Congress on three important issues: Money Follows the Person, the workforce crisis, and the ABLE Age Adjustment Act. For the convenience of participants, we created ANCOR’s Digital Advocacy Page, which will continue to be a resource for members seeking to advocate to Congress in the coming months. We are proud of the work done this month by the Grassroots Work Group and wanted to share highlights of their activities:

• Members scheduled in-person meetings with their Congressional delegations in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri and Pennsylvania.
• California members prepared packets with the one-pagers on the Digital Advocacy Page and dropped in their members of Congress’ in-district offices to distribute packets, with an invitation to learn more about these issues.
• Ohio members volunteered with campaigns to increase providers’ visibility. 
• California, Illinois, Kansas, New Jersey and Minnesota members shared the Challenge through social media.
• Missouri members also placed phone calls to their members of Congress and attended town halls / legislative breakfasts.
• And last but not least, Pennsylvania members organized a site visit with U.S. Representative Connor Lamb’s staff, as pictured belowed. The site visit also featured a discussion section between U.S. Representative Lamb’s staff and self-advocates, parents, PAR (the Pennsylvania state association) and the agency.

These are just some of the activities we are aware of at this time! If you have participated in the ANCOR August Advocacy Challenge and not let us know yet, please fill out this survey so we can see if those Congressional offices need follow-up from ANCOR’s staff… and so we can be aware of the great work you are doing!

If you would like to learn more about the Work Group or engage in advocacy the next time Congress has an in-district recess, please reach out to Doris Parfaite-Claude, Federal Advocacy and Research Manager, at [email protected], and Gary Blumental of PAR, Chair of ANCOR’s Grassroots Work Group, at [email protected].