NYAIL Action Alert for Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Funding

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Action alert in bold white letters on a red background

The following Action Alert comes from the New York Association on Independent Living (NYAIL):

We need your help! Contact your Senators now and tell them #WhatWeNeed is HCBS funding!

The Senate is about to begin negotiating the next COVID-19 relief package and we need your help to make sure that additional funding for home and community based services (HCBS) is included! We need to tell the Senate why HCBS matters!

HCBS funding is critical to help people with disabilities and older adults stay in their own homes and avoid unnecessary placement in congregate settings (such as nursing homes). These settings are especially dangerous during this crisis and the extremely high infection and death rates they face make additional HCBS funding a matter of life and death for many.

The new bill is in the works, so we can’t wait! We need to flood the Senate with calls and emails to make sure our voices are heard. Most of the negotiating will be done by Senate leadership, so even if you’ve called or emailed before, or shared your HCBS story on social media, we need you to contact your Senators again and tell them to convey to leadership why dedicated HCBS funding must be included in the new relief package. The bill is expected to be introduced shortly after the Senate returns from recess on July 20th, so we need to be persistent, we need to be loud, and we need to do it now!

Contact your Senators today! Below we have information on contacting your Senators, email and call scripts, and sample social media.

  • Email: We’ve put together a portal you can use to email your Senators directly here using our email script.

  • Call: You can also use this easy tool to find your Senators’ phone numbers and call them, using our call script. The tool also has links to their Twitter and Facebook and a link to contact them via email.

  • Social Media: You can use this tool to easily tweet your Senators using our sample tweet, below.

  • We are also co-hosting call-in days every Wednesday and we encourage everyone to participate! You can find call-in scripts and more information here.

Easy Call/Email Script:

Hello, this is [Name]. I’m a resident of [Town, State].

I am [calling/writing] to ask [Senator's Name] to make sure that the Senate’s COVID-19 relief bill includes dedicated funding for home and community-based (HCBS) to help the millions of people in this country with disabilities, who are among those most impacted by the pandemic. Dedicated HCBS funding is desperately needed to help people with disabilities and older adults remain safely in their homes rather than being forced in nursing homes and other congregate settings, where infections and deaths from COVID-19 are rampant.

The House included dedicated funding for HCBS in the HEROES Act (H.R. 6800), and it is critical that the Senate do the same. The need for HCBS funding is more urgent now than ever, with major outbreaks of COVID-19 in nursing homes and other congregate settings in the country. I ask you to convey the critical importance of dedicated HCBS funding to Senate leadership.

Thank you! [IF EMAILING/LEAVING A VOICEMAIL: please leave your full street address and zip code to ensure your call is tallied]

Sample Tweet

[Your Senator's Twitter Handle] #WhatWeNeed is dedicated HCBS funding in the next #COVID19 bill so people with disabilities can access the services they need safely at home, not in institutions with severe COVID-19 outbreaks.

Please also consider contacting Senate leadership as well. Those members are:

For more on COVID-19 advocacy efforts, check out our advocacy page. We also have much more on the COVID-19 outbreak and its impact on people with disabilities on our website, including information on COVID-19 legislation and HCBS waivers, medical rationing, and more.