 Welcome to this second part of this edition of Abled and On Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the differently abled. I've always been your host, Lauren Seiler. Arlene is off today. On this second part of this edition of Abled and On Air, which is the Disability Awareness Day, we focus on bringing down the House and the Senate how to talk to your legislator of your special needs. This includes a talk with the Green Mountain self-advocates and how to practice, how do people with special needs practice their agenda to talk and advocate with their legislators. Let's take a look at this. It's not going strong when we've seen that with the Supreme Court last year and some of the appointments now. We have a lot of questions to Attorney General Nominey's session about his support for these ADA and the Attorney General was less than a middle in how he would do as far as protecting those rights. Now last week, I think I'm 50, the House actually passed some legislation that lowered the burden for all the places like restaurants to accommodate. It kind of put the burden more on some of the disabilities to make the point that they had not provided those accessibility standards. There hasn't been a similar bill introduced in the Senate. Not many like to call them all people. I can assure you that it's already happening. That Senator Lay and many others, we fight against that. So all I'll say to you is that your voices really do matter. They matter here in Montpelier. They matter down in D.C. And my boss has been so proud of being able to support the Oregon D.C. and it is a bipartisan issue. To this day where we're going to talk about polarization, there is something that people do come together on and that's one of them because we all know individuals who have a different challenge than we do and we all face life in different ways. When you have a delegation between Senator Sanders, Senator Lay and Carl Welch who will continue to fight for the rights that you deserve. So thank you for being here. It does make a difference. Thank you. I'm giving it to you. Sorry. Sorry. Next up is Hillary from Senator Sanders' office. Can you hear me? Can everybody hear me? Good morning. Senator Sanders who is in Washington D.C. sends his best wishes and regrets that he cannot be here today. He wants you to know that he is working on your behalf to defeat the latest Trump budget proposal. And my speech from now on is going to be a little bit of a downer. I'm sorry because we're going to talk about the 2019 Trump budget, which drops most of the restored funding from the February 9th bipartisan budget deal by setting funding levels far below what the agreement calls for. The budget is passed with dramatically cut many programs that benefit people with disabilities as well as low income seniors. And that is why our congressional delegation will do all they can to defeat it. It reduces disability programs by $72 billion that includes both SSDI and SSI. It cuts SSI. Program benefits low income people with superior disabilities. For example, 1.2 million children received SSI for conditions such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism, some intellectual disability, and blindness. The budget cuts nearly $7 billion over 10 years for benefits for children and parents if another family member also receives SSI. Herding, for example, families with children who share a genetic disorder. Some 70% of poor families that care for more than one child with disabilities already struggle to afford basic needs like food, rent, and heat. Under the guide of quote simplification, the budget also cuts more than half a billion dollars over the next decade from SSI recipients who live with others outside of their immediate family to make tents meet. The budget cuts SNAP, eliminates LIHEAP, our low income home energy assistance program, and raises rents on families receiving low income rental assistance. It makes $1.4 trillion in cuts to the Medicaid program. And in addition, it cuts $5 million from our already underfunded independent living programs. As Bernie says, Trump's budget pays for his huge tax cuts for the rich and large corporations by slashing Medicaid, cutting Medicare, and slicing $10 million from the Social Security Disability Program. Bernie will do all that he can to stop these cuts from happening, and he thanks you for your strong support and advocacy. He will continue to advocate on behalf of those living with disabilities at every stage of life. Have a wonderful disability awareness day, and thank you. Representative, your welcome office was unable to attend today. As she's helping her son look at colleges over the winter break, she said, I'm so sorry on so many levels not to be present with disability awareness day. Given my background in the disability field and the congressman's own focus on health, human services, and social determinants of health, we have appeared best in group. He's in strong support of the disability community, and recently has taken up a number of positions that are important to nonadvocates. Most recently, he's voted no to the AGA Notification Bill. Congressman Welch sends best wishes to an outstanding group of people doing important work while inspiring the community at disability awareness day. Thank you. So, I'd like to introduce Sam Lest, a leader in Vermont's disability rights community on many levels. Sam serves on many councils and boards and wants to share that they are an important issue he helped out. Okay, thank you. A bit of good news that I want to share with the disability community. In keeping with the theme of this year's disability awareness day, I'm pleased to announce that on January 1st, 2018, enhancements to the Medicaid for Working Persons with Disabilities RenWPB program took effect in the state of Vermont. Advocates worked on these changes for many years. Not an exaggeration. And with multi-partisan support, three of the four changes came to fruition. These changes will allow more people with disabilities to work and to work more while retaining vital healthcare coverage. As we all know, employment is a major social determinant of health. People who are employed have been shown to be healthier than those unemployed and thus less costly to the healthcare system. In addition, these people are more productive socioeconomically. Therefore, such changes to social programs are a win-win effort. Many people with disabilities who, for example, require attendant care services provided by Medicaid and not necessarily by private insurance to be able to work will be able to do so and accrue assets. They will be on the road to self-sufficiency, self-confidence, and independence. The changes within Act 51 of 2015 approved in 2017 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and, yes, by this administration are, one, the entry-level asset threshold has been increased to $10,000 for a single and $15,000 for a couple, more in line with thresholds in many other states. Two, there is now a spousal of income disregard. The income the spouse is not applying for or eligible for MWPB will be disregarded in determining one's MWPB eligibility. And three, when an MWPB beneficiary reaches full Social Security retirement age, which is soon to be 67 in two years, his or her retirement Social Security cash benefit will continue to be disregarded after conversion from SSDI, providing, of course, all other eligibility criteria are met. This removes an unfair work disincentive upon reaching retirement age. Many people, including those with disabilities, are able to want to and need to work beyond retirement age. This change precludes an unfair spend-down simply to retain their vital Medicaid. I would like to thank all of the legislators and administration staff who made these changes possible. We will still need to rework a fourth potential work-incentive enhancement that was at least temporarily disallowed by CMS for technical reason, the so-called reverse spousal disregard. Other states have implemented such a disregard and with the change in language in the Medicaid State Plan Amendment, it is possible to implement a refusal. It would disregard the income of the MWPB spouse for the purpose of determining eligibility of the non-MWPB spouse for certain types of Medicaid. This is, as you might suspect, this is all part of our community, our health and our well-being. Thank you. So next up, we have our facing state treasurer and able half champion Ben Pierce who will give us an update. Welcome, Ben. Very much pleasure to be here today and talk a little bit about ABLE. ABLE is Achieving a Better Life Experience. It's a program that was passed in Congress. Not a lot's been happening over the last seven years in Congress, despite the fact that we have the best congressional delegation in the country, right? Yeah. And it was passed and a lot of states have put together this program and we were able to do this in 2015. And it's a great program. What is intended to do is help ease the hardship of individuals with disabilities by allowing you to stay for the future and to have financial independence. So basically what you can do is assets held in the Naval of Congress that's from consideration for state and federal benefit programs for the benefits that we're all dealing with. And I really appreciate all the work that folks have been doing to address that and allowing you to put money into a tax deferred savings account. Up to $15,000 a year for people that are working and want to put their future relatives or folks who would like to contribute. It's a great program. At this point in time, we've worked very hard to make sure that folks around the state understand that eligibility for SSI Medicaid and other public benefits are not affected by putting the money into this program and work very close to the folks. Right now we have, this was as of November 30th, the average was such that it was $3,800 per person, which means we've already had people exceed the benefit level by about $1,800. We had, as of 2018, 128 in rolling, so 128 people are in the program. It's a really terrific program and it's an ability to have some financial independence and to save the future. I want to compliment my policy director over there who worked on the legislative agenda. Give him a hand please. Every week, we get new updates on the amount of folks in the program and it's three or four, it's growing every week. We want to see it grow even more because the more people in it, frankly, the fees go down. So from our end, we want to make sure that we can do that and we want to serve as many individuals with disabilities as possible. So we brought some materials on it today and I'm not sure where we're going to be able to put them right over there. If you're interested in the program, check it out. You can call around this. Check out our website or we'd be happy to come to any meeting, any place in the state to have a conversation about this. It is so important. It's also linked to a financial literacy program. You can use it for your daily needs and expenses as well as save for the future. It's a wonderful program. Not much gets out of Congress these days. This is a good one. So thank you very much and continue to work. This was a partnership with the disability groups and rights groups and I want to say thank you very much for the folks that worked on this program. Thank you very much and we're going to continue to advocate so that individuals with disabilities have the same ability to access financial programs and to have financial independence in their lives. Thank you very much. I want to be sure to invite you to stick around from attending a workshop on the human cost of cuts for Susan Aronoff of the Vermont Development of Disabilities Council. Susan will be looking at the impact of budget decreases on the social determinants of health. Also, I want to remind everybody that at 3 o'clock in this room the Vermont Leadership Series class of 2018 will be presenting their projects and will be gratifying so we hope that you can join us and celebrate their success at 3 o'clock. We are so excited to welcome a new group of self-advocates and family leaders to the field. Make sure that you grab an agenda for the day at the outer table or over here to know when and where everything is happening. We hope it will be a full day for everybody and we're hoping that you get a chance to take full advantage of it. If you have any questions, members of ECR will be around to help you wrap the day. Please make sure you sign in at the registration table outside group 10 at some time again this day. It's important to know who is here. If you want to get emails about advocacy issues from the coalition alert list please give your current email when you sign in. I also heard from our lieutenant over here that he would like to split board and any remaining cards passed so you can put that above the table where we're done with it in the room. I will make sure that happens. Before we end this part, I want to recognize Stephanie Monty, our amazing lieutenant and the committee for this great day to be under from all of us. We have some applause for them. Thank you everyone. We have a great day talking about our community, our health and our well-being. Happy disability awareness. Thank you. Hello everyone. I have an announcement. For anybody who doesn't get SSI, SSDI on collecting stories SSI is the next fight on the top of the hill. SSDI, Medicaid, talk about what would happen here. They were plot granted so please, more stories, the better. Thank you. It makes a difference down in DC because when you tell someone what's going on in your life it really has an impact because you know what it's like. You can study stuff forever but once you hear from someone the impact like the ADA have on people's life it really makes it understandable. My boss has been there a while and he was one of the supporters of the first American disability act in 1990 and was proud. In 2008 he led legislation to expand and clarify the protections offered over the ADA. There were concerns that some of the courts were interpreting the law differently and being a little more restrictive as to how they interpret the law and also expanding the ADA to cover the effulency of multiple schools in states like that. And he's made a commitment over the years to support traditional nominees who get lifetime appointments who will support the ADA and he's going to get those traditional nominees who have not committed themselves to support them. And it's really important to remember that lifetime appointments are courts that have such an impact. You know nothing in a democracy is current. That's why we have an election in June 4-6 years and we have a lifetime appointment to a court. That's not something we could change. And he's also been supportive of nominees who will understand the right of Congress and the right of legislation that enables law for the court to have to follow. But it's not going strong when we've seen that with the Supreme Court last year that some of the appointments now. In fact, he submitted questions to Attorney General nominee session about his support for the ADA and the Attorney General was less than in the middle in how he would do those rights. Now last week, I think I'm 50, the House actually passed some legislation that forwarded burden for all the places like restaurants to accommodate. It kind of put the burden more on some of the disabilities to make the point that they had not provided those accessibility standards. There hasn't been a similar bill introduced in the Senate. With any luck, there are probably multiple. I can assure you that it's worth it happening that Senator Lay, and many others, we fight against that. So all I'll say to you is that your voices really do matter. They matter here in Montpelier. They matter down in D.C. And my boss has been so proud of the support and the origin of the American Disability Act. And it is a bipartisan issue. To this day where we hear a lot about polarization, there is something that people do come together on and that's one of them because we do it all in life in different ways. When you have a delegation between Senator Sanders and Senator Lay they can also watch for what continues to play for the rights that you deserve. So thank you for doing it here. It does make a difference. Thanks. I'm never going to do it. Sorry. Next up is Sherry from Senator Sanders' office. Welcome, Sherry. Can everybody hear me? Good morning. Senator Sanders who is in Washington D.C. sends his best wishes and regrets that he cannot be here today. He wants you to know that he is working on your behalf to defeat the latest Trump budget. And my speech from now on is going to be a little bit of a downer. I'm sorry because we're going to talk about the 2019 Trump budget which drops most of the restored funding from the February 9th bipartisan budget deal by setting funding levels far below what the agreement calls for. The budget is passed with dramatically cut many programs that benefit people with disabilities as well as low income seniors. And that is why our congressional delegation will do all they can to defeat it. It reduces disability programs by $72 billion that includes both SSDI SSI. It cuts SSI. Program benefits low income people with severe disabilities. For example, 1.2 million children received SSI for conditions such as down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism intellectual disability and blindness. The budget cuts nearly $7 billion over 10 years for benefits for children and parents and family members also received SSI. Herding for example families with children who share a genetic disorder. Some 70% of poor families that care for more than one child with disabilities already struggle to afford basic needs like food, rent and heat. Under the guide of quote simplification the budget also cuts more than half a billion dollars over the next decade from SSI recipients who live with others outside of their immediate family to make ends meet. The budget cuts SNAP eliminates LIHEAP our low income home energy assistance program and raises grants on families receiving low income rental assistance. It makes $1.4 trillion in cuts to the Medicaid program. And in addition it cuts $5 million from our already under funded independent living programs. As Bernie says Trump's budget pays for his huge tax cuts for the rich and large corporations by slashing Medicaid, cutting Medicare and slicing $10 million from the Social Security Disability program. Bernie will do all that he can to stop these cuts from happening and he thanks you for your strong support and advocacy. He will continue to advocate on behalf of those living with disabilities at every stage of life to have a wonderful disability of where it is today and thank you. We're representing your welcome office was unable to attend today as she's helping her son look at colleges over the winter break. She said, I'm so sorry I'm so many loves not to be present in disability over this day. Given my background in the disability field and the congressman's own focus on health, human services and social determinants of health we give Peter the best of the group. He's in strong support of the disability community and recently has taken up a number of positions that are important to nonadvocates. Most recently he's voted no to the ABA Notification Bill. Congressman Welch sends best wishes to an outstanding group of people doing important work while inspiring the community to have an awareness day. Thank you Kevin Gulliver. So, I'd like to introduce Sam Liss a leader in Vermont's disability rights community on many levels. Sam serves on many councils and boards and wants to share an important issue he helped out. Thank you. Thank you. A bit of good news that I want to share about with the disability community. In keeping with the theme of disability awareness day I'm pleased to announce that on January 1st, 2018 enhancements to the Medicaid for Working Persons with Disabilities WPD program took effect in the state of Vermont. Advocates worked on these changes for many years. Not an exaggeration. And with multi-partisan support three of the four changes came to fruition. These changes will allow more people with disabilities to work and to work more while retaining vital health care coverage. As we all know employment is a major social determinant of health. People who are employed have been shown to be healthier than those unemployed and thus less costly to the health care system. In addition these people are more productive socioeconomically. Therefore such changes to social programs are a win-win effort. Many people with disabilities who for example require attendant care services provided by Medicaid and not necessarily by private insurance to be able to work will be able to do so and accrue assets. They will be on the road to efficiency, self-confidence and independence. The changes within Act 51 of 2015 approved in 2017 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and yes by this administration are 1. The entry level asset threshold has been increased to $10,000 for a single and $15,000 for a couple more in line with thresholds in many other states. 2. There is now a spousal if income disregards. The income the spouse not applying for or eligible for MWPD will be disregarded in determining one's MWPD eligibility. And 3. When an MWPD beneficiary reaches full social security retirement age which is soon to be 67 in two years is her retirement social security cash benefit will continue to be disregarded after conversion from SSDI providing of course all other eligibility criteria are met. This removes an unfair work disincentive upon reaching retirement age. Many people including those with disabilities are able to want to and need to work beyond retirement age. This change precludes an unfair spend down simply to retain their vital medication. I would like to thank all of the legislators and administration staff who made these changes possible. We will still need to rework a fourth potential work that was at least temporarily disallowed by CMS for technical reason. The so-called reverse fowl disregard. Other states have implemented such a disregard and with a change in language in the Medicaid state plan amendment it is possible to implement in the future. It would disregard the income of the MWPD spouse for the purpose of determining eligibility of the non-MWPD spouse for certain types of states. As you might suspect, this is all part of our community, our health and our well-being. Thank you. We have our facing state leader and able half champion Ben Pierce here to give us an update. Welcome Ben. It's a pleasure to be here today and talk a little bit about ABLE. ABLE is Achieving a Better Life Experience. It's a program that was passed in Congress, not a lot has been happening in Congress, despite the fact that we are the best congressional delegation in the country, right? It was passed in a lot of states to put together this program and we were able to do this in 2015 and it's a great program. What it is intended to do is help ease the hardship of individuals with disabilities by allowing you to stay for the future and to have financial independence. So basically what you can do is enable a comprehensive consideration for state and federal benefit programs for the benefits that we're all dealing with and I really appreciate all the work that folks have been doing to address that and allow you to put money into a tax deferred savings account. Up to $15,000 a year for people that are working and want to put some money into that for the future relatives or folks that would like to contribute, it's a great program. At this point in time we've worked very hard to make sure that folks around the state are to understand that eligibility for SSI and Medicaid and other public benefits are not affected by putting the money into this program and work very close to the folks. Right now we have this was as of November 30th, the average account balance was such that it was $3,800 per person which means we've already had people exceed the benefit level by about $1,800. We've had as of $2,828 in rolling so 120 people are in the program it's a really terrific program and it's an ability to have some financial independence and to save the future I want to compliment my policy director over there who worked on the legislation. Put your hand up there so they can see it. Give him a hand please. Give him a hand please. Every week we get new updates on the number of folks that are enrolled in the program and it's three or four, it's growing every week. We want to see it grow even more because the more people in it frankly the fees go down and so from our engine we want to make sure that we can do that and we want to serve as many individuals with disabilities as possible. So we brought some materials on it today I'm not sure where we're going to be able to put them right over there if you're interested in the program check it out, even call our office check out our website we'd be happy to come to any meeting any place in the state to have a conversation about this. It is so important bottom line it's also linked to a financial literacy program you can use it for your daily needs and expenses as well the same for the future it's a wonderful program not much gets out of Congress these days this is a good one so thank you very much and continue to work. This was a partnership with the disability groups and rights groups and I want to say thank you very much for the folks that worked on this program thank you very much and we're going to continue to advocate so that individuals with disabilities have the same ability to access financial programs and to have financial independence in their lives. Thank you very much I want to be sure to invite you to stick around from attending a workshop on the human cost of cuts for Susan Aronoff of the Vermont Development of Disabilities Council Susan will be looking at the impact of budget decreases on the social determinants of health also I want to remind everybody that at 3 o'clock in this room the Vermont Leadership Series Class of 2018 will be presenting their projects and we'll be gratifying so we hope that you can join us in celebrating their success at 3 o'clock today we are so excited to welcome a new group of self advocates and family leaders to the field make sure that you grab an agenda for the day at the outer table over here to know when and where everything is happening we hope you have a full day for everybody and we're hoping that you get a chance to take full in-hand mail if you have any questions members of ECEAR will be around to help you out the day please make sure you sign in at the registration table outside group 10 at some point in this day it's important to know who is here if you want to get emails about advocacy issues from the Coalition you're currently mailed when you sign in I also heard from our lieutenant over here that you would like to split board and any remaining cards max so if you can put that up on the table when we're done with it in the room I will make sure that happens before we end this part I want to recognize Stephanie Monty our amazing event coordinator from the Vermont Center for Independent Living and the committee to put this great day to the other four of us we have some applause for them for our help and our well-being happy disability awareness day thank you hello everyone I have an announcement for anybody who doesn't get SSI SSDI on collecting stories SSI is the next place on Capitol Hill so please get the stories of SSI SSDI, Medicaid what happened here they were block branded so please more stories the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council and my organization believes a lot in accessibility making things accessible and one of the things we've been learning about is using the mic we call it liking the mic so I'm learning to like the mic and I'm going to try very hard to make sure you all can hear me so how do you feel about the door being open showcasing open show of hands to keep the doors open show of hands to close the door okay if someone near each door close the door that would be great welcome to disability awareness day before we get started I would love it if you'd be willing if you could go around the room and if you could just say your name and your town the most amazing thing about this day is that we've got people here from Derby Line and we've got people here from Brattle Park so I think the organizers of this event were really hard to get people out from all over the state and I would love for you all to hear where you're all from so we can start in the back corner say your name and your town oh right I'm kidding you're from the house back corner my name is Gennie and great Patricia Woodbury awesome Burlington Brattle World just so you guys know it takes like two hours to get here from Brattle World these books had to be pretty hard to read where are you from awesome Joe Bradelberg Brattle World I'm from St. Albans my name is Vianco Lake St. Albans that's almost as far as Brattle World good for you for getting down here great anyone that's really good welcome from West Berkshire where's that oh ok you might be in the running for the furthest away welcome thanks for being here alright how about we start in that back corner over there Castleton, great Castleton who else Burlington, awesome great, welcome and how about excellent I'm from Harvard Harvard, welcome great excellent that took you a while to get up here too thanks for coming great welcome great welcome from where great great I know where that is out near Wells River I'm going to take you to get here more than an hour well thanks for coming ok front row welcome welcome awesome awesome well another far traveler thank you ok how about if we swing over thank you for being here thanks great welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome thank you welcome hey Thomas good to see you welcome welcome to call welcome to call should we continue with the back wall here in the center section awesome welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome very very hometown boy right next door we're through content your welcome break earlier you welcome do it further yes welcome meet welcome from Burlington. Glad you mean it. Farrah from Burlington. Welcome. Welcome to Burlington. Welcome to Burlington. Wow, another four-traveller. Right, so we're one-two here. Welcome. Welcome to one-two here. I stand on Parkville. Park. So we can sit down. Welcome. Glad you're here. Carrie, darling from Mary. Welcome, Kevin. I'm from Burlington. Larry from Montpelio. From Middlebury. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, we kind of start to move it. And also, we're going to sit with you right there. And that's excellent. I'm from Burlington. Welcome. Great. I'm from Harris. Glad you mean it. I'm from St. Augustine. Thanks, everyone, for being here. Can I get a quick show again? Oh, hey! Oh, my God! Please, there's more! Okay, so we hear it. There, from Hartwick. Hartwick, welcome. I'm from Clayfield. Glad you mean it. Welcome. Thank you for coming on us. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you so much. I am from Burlington. I am from Burlington. I am from Hartwick. I am from all over the world. Thank you so much. I think there's a good number of people here from the Hartwick-Marshville area. Welcome. Can I get a show of hands for folks that this is your first time being in the Vermont State House? First-timers? Oh, I got a pretty good hand. Who on here? All right. For the first-timers and even for some of you who've been here before, I think one of the most important things that goes on in this building is called the state budget. The budget is what we're going to be talking about for the rest of the workshop. The budget is when the people that we elect are senators and are representatives decide how much of the money that they collect from taxes and fees and other things. Decide how much of that money they're going to spend on roads and how much of that money they're going to spend on police and how much of that money they're going to spend on certain services. What you have to call the human services or social services. So we're going to be talking about the health and human services budget and some tasks that are being proposed to that budget. And rather than just talk about numbers and millions of dollars a year and 42 people there or things like that, I kind of wanted to hear from all of you guys who traveled all the hours to get here today. What's the impact of budget cuts of cuts and services? How that impacts your life and your health? Because one of the things we want the people we elect to understand is that even if they don't cut healthcare by cutting something like housing or food or something else they might impact healthcare. So I wanted to just kind of talk about a couple of the budget cuts and get some feedback from all of you guys about how those budget cuts will impact actual people. People like you. People like your friends. People like your family. People who vote and vote for these elected representatives. So I think we can start telling the story of if you cut personal care and services and someone can't get to work this is how it's going to impact their day and their life and their children and their families. So right now there are a lot of groups and organizations here today that can give you specific information of facts and figures about things that are being cut and there are some fact sheets on that table over there and my organization on the table I don't want to take up our time together talking about a lot of numbers. I want to talk about your actual lives and what matters and what appears. So if I were to say to you that people who are getting developmental services waivers for things like respite and employment support and those things were being cut could you give me some examples of how it might impact someone's life? We're going to do an example. Okay, so I don't know your name but you've got a great purple sweatshirt around. Can you give an example? Can you give me support during the week? Can you give me another example? I don't know through your name. Marjorie? I don't know. Okay, Marjorie's example I'm sorry, I didn't give your example first. The first example was that someone who's receiving community support wouldn't be able to get two activities outside of her house without that community support and those activities including things like therapeutic horseback riding and the other example from Marjorie was that without personal security income, she wouldn't be able to pay her rent. Are there other examples? I wouldn't have support with my wife or TIS I wouldn't have some money and without her I wouldn't have the support. And how would you like my job for your job? So you need support in order to work. And has it been important to you to work? How about here it is. Help me to understand about reasons to know and to understand about some of the things that people take so frankly to read things very hard and we kind of stand to help me become a better person. That's pretty clear if I'm reading a quote. And also if we cannot have somebody's services it's probably important right now to keep her house better. Yeah. That's one thing that people have found is that when countries spend more on social services things like housing job support they end up spending less on healthcare because when people have good housing and they have good food and they have good schools they tend to have better health. We as a country we spend a lot more on healthcare and less on the social support other countries that spend more on social support end up spending less on healthcare and to Gary's point a lot of these things like working they can help people with being able to help. The tenement in this hand up is the front row. Your cost of your medicine would go up without the benefits that you received. That is huge. Thank you. The gentleman in the second row Eric. So you get assistance with transportation. Transportation is a really important and in a state like Vermont they call states like Vermont rural states a lot of land in between the towns. Transportation is a big challenge and people who live with disabilities in rural states have greater issues with social isolation. It's just harder to get around if you're in a car and then you're more socially accredited. In the back row. I'm young Julia and it's when we see one kind of a health center and how positive children here are born with a lot of problems when they're born. Great. In the back corner. I'm Nicole and for me I get a support to at the VA which is transportation. Okay. And then I go towards to our back main again outside. So this is Nicole who has some assistance with transportation and I'm about to ask her how her life would be different without that transportation. The it's difficult for me to get around but you all still have like power and other support but that way I feel that I say I get confused with directions and with the bus I do that that way and I am able to still get around to that. Okay. So Nicole was talking about being able to get some transportation assistance from Howard which one of the other things I want to mention in the time that we have together is Howard is a type of agency it's called a designated agency. How many of you have heard of designated agencies, VA's and specialized services agencies, SSAs? So I can folks who've heard VA's and SSAs. So the designated agencies and specialized services agencies receive a lot of public money Medicaid money public money to provide services on behalf of the state and receive money from the state to provide services to people with a wide range of disabilities to meet a wide range of needs and one of the things that the Developmental Disabilities Council has worked on really hard last year in the budget and this year in the budget is trying to make sure that the people who work for the designated agencies the people who work for Howard who work for the United Counseling County Mineral that these people who do the work that keep people independent and in the community and happy and healthy and working it's really important that these people have a living wage, a livable wage and so last year in the budget process the legislature put money in the budget so that the direct care workers at the designated agencies and the specialized service agencies could have a wage of $14 and that was supposed to be phase one everyone called it phase one because this year was supposed to be phase two where there was supposed to be money in the budget so that that minimum wage could go up to 15 but also so that other workers in the designated agency and the specialized services agencies could get more of a living wage more equal to what other state employees get paid doing similar work or what people get paid doing similar work in hospitals or other organizations because right now there's a staff turnover rate of about I said I was going to talk about a number so apologies of about 25% that means one in four one in four workers in the designated agency specialized service agencies has to get replaced each year and aside from that being very disruptive to the people that they serve it's also really expensive to the organization it costs a lot of money but the reason why they have a high turnover rate is that they cannot pay enough to keep good people on staff long term to do this really important work so one of the things that we've been talking about with the budget committee and that I hope you guys talk about with your senators and their representatives is the need to implement phase two of the wage increases for the designated agencies and the specialized services agencies we have a lot of fact sheets about technical issues of things like wage compression and those turnover rates and the information that we want information to give to your senator we've got it if you just want to tell them I need these services my friends need these services these services depend on a well paid qualified workforce stabilize that workforce that's enough to help them so that's a real big issue and I wanted to make sure since a couple of you have mentioned workers from you to support and provide you the services a lot of you probably got here today which supports the services from the staff from the designated agencies and the specialized workforce agencies so that was something like big words specialized services agencies you can just call them GA's and SSAs and everyone in possibility will know exactly what you're talking about along those same lines if you take some time today to talk to one of your senators or reps and really encourage you to do that and I'll be around I can help make introductions other people will be around we can help make introductions if you talk to them please talk to them about cuts to a lot of the human services program there's a cut to a personal attended services program that will affect 42 people who rely on personal attending care you can get in the facts on that there are cuts to people who receive developmental services on waivers those waivers are going to be cut across the board by about $4 million which is a cut that affects real people real respite hours you know real services that people depend on it really impacts quality of life so please it's great you traveled here all the way here from Durham line where Mike did and you spoke from Bravo take advantage of the fact that you're in the building seek out a senator or a rep ask us how and say please fund those salary increases please stabilize those services please don't cut services please protect our Medicaid because we all we could spend another hour in here with people sharing stories about what it means to them to have transportation to have housing and how it would impact all of us if they did and how it would impact health and costs there's someone over here who said smartly how it is scary that if you pay for these services you end up having to pay less for emergency services and less for more expensive healthcare down the road so while you're my time is up my time is up but while you're here please reach out talk to a rep, talk to a senator and express your views and your opinions make your voice heard thanks a lot for coming well that puts an end to this addition second part of Disability Awareness Day at the State House we cover central Vermont I'm Lauren Seiler see you next time for part three of Disability Awareness Day in which we discuss the mental health policy update join Ed Pen- let's join Ed Penguin of Disability Rights Vermont on the next episode stay tuned I'm Lauren Seiler see you next time