For Information contact:
Bob Kafka 512-431-4085
Marsha Katz 406-544-9504
Janine Bertram 503-504-9787
Washington, D.C.-- ADAPT met on September 12 with National Catholic Partnership on Disability (NCPD), as promised by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in late July. In this historic meeting, the NCPD agreed to support MiCASSA, the Medicaid Community Choice Act (H.R. 910, S 401.)
Janice Benton, NCPD Executive Director, and Board Chair, Jerry Freewalt, who flew in from Columbus, Ohio for the meeting, met with a small group of ADAPT activists from Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. to hammer out an agreement. Following the smaller meeting, Benton and Freewalt joined all 500 ADAPT activists from 30 states to announce that NCPD would write a letter supporting MiCASSA, and would send it to all of the bill’s co-sponsors, as well as the NCPD network. The letter was written and sent to the Senate and House Co-sponsors on September 14.
NCPD further agreed to continue working with ADAPT to advance the inclusion of people with disabilities in community life, in keeping with an NCPD founding principle that calls for the “… defense of all other rights which enable the individual with the disability to achieve the fullest measure of personal development of which he or she is capable. These include the right to equal opportunity in education, in employment, in housing, and in health care, as well as the right to free access to public accommodations, facilities and services.”
The September 12 meeting was the result of ADAPT activists from Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington, D.C. visiting the Washington headquarters of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in July, 2006 to request support for getting people with disabilities out of nursing homes and other institutions. The USCCB has historically supported initiatives that protected and advanced civil rights, but has, until now, not extended that support to freeing people with disabilities of all ages from institutionalization.
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