NCSA Support for Tennessee HB 2497 — Nonprofit Disability Housing Options (March 2024)
NCSA's March 2024 letter and testimony to the Tennessee House Committee on Health supporting HB 2497, arguing from years of national policy analysis that nonprofit residential communities for adults with disabilities increase community access and quality of life — and do not constitute segregation.
NCSA Opposition to Oregon HB 4088 — Criminalizing Disability Behaviors in Hospital Settings (February 2024)
NCSA Policy Director Jackie Kancir's February 2024 testimony opposing Oregon HB 4088, which would expose individuals with severe autism and IDD to felony assault charges for challenging behaviors during hospital care — arguing that criminalizing disability symptoms has no deterrent effect and that specialized units, not prosecution, are the answer.
NCSA Letter to Oregon: Urgent Need for 1135 Waiver to Pay Extreme Family Caregivers — May 2022
NCSA's May 2022 letter to Oregon state officials urging extension of the COVID-era 1135 waiver that allowed family members of children with severe disabilities to be paid as caregivers — documenting the extreme caregiving situations (diapering 200-pound adults, preventing rock ingestion, monitoring seizures) that go far beyond ordinary parenting.
NCSA Letter Supporting New Jersey's Billy Cray's Law — Electronic Monitoring in Group Homes (June 2020)
NCSA's June 2020 letter supporting New Jersey's Billy Cray's Law (A4013), which would authorize electronic monitoring devices in group homes for adults with developmental disabilities — arguing that for individuals who cannot communicate abuse, cameras are not surveillance but their only witness.
NCSA Letter to Vice President Biden: Include Severe Autism in Your Disability Agenda — June 2020
NCSA wrote to the Biden campaign in June 2020 arguing that the campaign's disability policy platform as written excluded the urgent needs of individuals with severe forms of autism and intellectual disability — urging explicit inclusion on guardianship protections, residential options, and retention of the 14(c) employment program.
NCSA Letter Opposing Pennsylvania's Plan to Close State Developmental Centers — October 2019
NCSA's October 2019 letter to Governor Tom Wolf opposing the closure of Pennsylvania's Polk and White Haven Developmental Centers, arguing that closing residential facilities does not save money — it shifts costs onto aging parents, law enforcement, ERs, and nursing homes, and leaves the most behaviorally complex individuals with nowhere to go.
NCSA Letter Supporting the SSI Restoration Act (H.R. 4280) — September 2019
NCSA's September 2019 letter supporting H.R. 4280, the SSI Restoration Act, arguing that the outdated $2,000 asset limit traps adults with severe autism in poverty and penalizes families for providing basic financial support to their most vulnerable members.
NCSA Letter Opposing the Transformation to Competitive Employment Act and Raise the Wage Act — July 2019
NCSA's July 2019 letter opposing both the TCEA and the Raise the Wage Act, arguing that eliminating the 14(c) sub-minimum wage program would strip adults with profound cognitive disabilities of their jobs, their programs, their earned income, and their right to meaningful community engagement.
NCSA Letter Supporting Reauthorization of the Autism CARES Act — February 2019
NCSA's February 2019 letter supporting reauthorization of the Autism CARES Act, urging Congress to use the reauthorization as a foundation for the systemic reform needed to prepare the country for the surge of adults with severe autism who will require lifelong public services.