Message From the President/CEO
Rally at the State House on April 2nd!
March 28, 2012
Dear Friends, Family, and Colleagues,
I invite you to join me in a fight for fairness! For decades services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) have languished through benign neglect (during good economic times) or been actively cut (during periods of economic struggles such as the past four years). By now you probably know the shameful statistics:
• State contracts funding these vital human services have not received a cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) since FY ‘1987 (7/1/86-6/30/87). According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics the cost of living nationally has increased by 74.5% between 1986 and 2011! For confirmation go to: www.ssa.gov/oact/COLA/colaseries.html.
• The state legislature has not authorized an annualized raise for direct care workers in over four years. However, many state employees have been given raises during this same time period.
• The legislature recognized that the state’s human services infrastructure had been so grossly under-funded over the years that it passed Chapter 257 to promote fair and reasonable funding for these vital human services. This law has not been funded since its’ passage.
• Massachusetts (which has long prided itself on being a bastion of progressive thought, policies and education) operates more institutions (6) than virtually any other state in the country! This shocking anachronism costs the state tens of millions of dollars each year to house a tiny population who could be served better, for a fraction of the costs, in community-based programs.
The results:
• An exhausted workforce. Most direct care employees work two or even three jobs in order to support their families.
• The stark reality that even during a period of near-historic levels of unemployment in our country, most human service organizations cannot fill all of their open positions due to low wages.
On Monday, April 2nd the MA Council of Human Services Providers and ‘The Caring Force’ will be holding a rally at the State House in Boston beginning at 10:00 AM in the Nurse’s Hall. Please join myself and many others educate and advocate for fairness! This is our chance to let the legislature know how important this issue is for our field, the hard-working women and men who provide direct care services and for the people we serve.
Thank you for your help!
Sincerely,
Christopher T. White, Ed.D.
President/CEO
