Advocacy Team
Support the Better Jobs Better Care Act
Access Living friends and allies,
Today is a national day of action for the Better Care Better Jobs Act. Across the country, people with disabilities, seniors, and workers who provide personal care/direct supports and child care are uniting to call on Congress to invest in care jobs and the women of color who do the majority of care work. Here are a few ways folks can take action.
Rally at Federal Plaza: In Chicago, at 11:30 am activists will gather at Federal Plaza, 219 S. Dearborn. There will be a rally with a lineup of speakers personally invested in the Better Care Better Jobs Act, including longtime Access Living community member Michael Grice, who relies on the Illinois Home Services Program. Grice will be joined by other members of the Access Living community organizing groups, including the Task Force for Attendant Services (TFAS). The event information is at this link. To learn more about TFAS, see this link.
Learn More About the Bill: To learn more about the Better Care Better Jobs Act, check out the bill summary at this link, put together by the U.S. Senate Aging Committee. The major points of the bill are to:
…Enhance Medicaid funding for home and community based services (HCBS)
…Encourage innovative models that benefit direct care workers and care recipients
…Support quality and accountability
…Facilitate state planning
…Permanent spousal impoverishment protections
…Make the Money Follows the Person Rebalancing Demonstration permanent.
Contact Your Members of Congress: It is absolutely essential that your members of Congress hear about why you need them to support this bill. Here is a quick email action link you can use to contact them-please consider also asking your family, friends and support workers to do this as well. Over the course of the pandemic and our national economic recovery effort, Medicaid HCBS has consistently been sent to the back of the line. The time to act is now!
Please share this alert widely. Thank you for your advocacy.