Describe how you used your Sparkplug Grant
I thought this was submitted in June 2022, but I don't see it in the portal. Alliance for Community Services report to Sparkplug Foundation June 23, 2022 Project: Organize people with disabilities and current/former nursing facility residents to build a multi-facility group to have a voice in pandemic and other policies that affect them, as well as improve health, safety, and autonomy for all. As predicted by many, persons in congregate settings (nursing homes, shelters, prisons) had by far the highest risk of getting and dying from COVID. People with disabilities (PWDs), long concerned about the failures of nursing homes and similar institutions, sounded the alarm, but were largely ignored. Organizing people most affected required a variety of approaches, but the core mission was to develop groups that could have a strong enough voice to be heard in the debates over COVID and other institutional policies. The project had three overlapping pieces: a. Forming the statewide “Institutional Rescue and Recovery Coalition” (IRRC). Twice monthly meetings to share, educate, and decide on actions. b. Organizing a facility resident group within the IRRC. Weekly meetings of facility residents and advocates to share experiences, compare what’s happening facility to facility, identify problems, support one another, and propose action steps. c. Convening a national network of disability-led orgs, which became known as SILVER. Weekly meetings of disability-led organizations across the country, to develop demands to federal officials, organize advocacy. 1) Activities included: • Multiple meetings with policy-makers around demands, including invitation to testify to the National Council on Disability, White House and Health and Human Services staff • A march and direct actions, letter writing and petition campaigns • 2-day Organizing training, and multiple educational workshops • Zoom press conferences • Formation of an IRRC Steering Committee • Support for residents to get out into community living 2) Outcomes/accomplishments include: • Blocking privatization of Chicago’s nursing home ombudsman program, and wining full funding and full staffing (for the first time in over a decade), and continuing to press the City to actually hire the promised ombuds (completed, May 2022) • Getting FEMA to pay to rescue some residents of COVID-deadly nursing homes, allowing them to get out of danger into safer non-congregate space and survive, and open the door to possible new policy stance • Drafting of multiple policy demands, drafted by PWDs and facility residents, and recruiting dozens of disability-led organizations to sign on • Helping to pass a bill creating an ‘Access and Functional Needs’ advisory committee to the Illinois emergency management agency (IEMA), and pressing for PWD leadership in that committee • Several of our facility residents transitioning out, and becoming former residents, living more independently in the community • Beginning to draft a toolkit for local groups to develop their own emergency relocation programs • A small but stable core of residents, former residents, PWDs that are leading the next phase of work, developing a platform of state and federal demands For more information contact: Lyndsay Sullivan sulli228614@gmail.com Ebony Payne epayne713@gmail.com Barb Pritchard bmpritchard@comcast.net Fran Tobin fxtthatsme@gmail.com