COVID-19

It’s no secret that the everyday lives of community providers and the people they support were turned upside down in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the globe. Seemingly in an instant, providers were left grappling with questions they may never have previously considered. How do we ensure that people living in congregate settings are safe from a deadly infectious disease? How do we ensure the essential workers we support can go to work without getting their housemates sick when they return? How do we ensure direct support professionals (DSPs) have enough personal protective equipment to keep themselves safe and healthy? And how can we pay DSPs wages that reflect their incredible work under incredibly risky circumstances when resources were already far too scarce?

In response to these hard questions, a variety of changes were in order—changes to our ways of working, changes to our states’ regulations, changes to federal public policy, and changes to how we think about the balance between risk and rights. Altogether, community providers rose to the occasion, but the pandemic continues to linger. For as long as it does, ANCOR remains committed to ensuring that you can keep doing what you have done so well for so long: isolating people from the worst effects of COVID-19, without isolating them from their communities.