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Press Release: ADAPT in Utah Fall 2015

ADAPT in Salt Lake City, Utah – September 26 – October 1, 2015

For Information:

Bruce Darling (585) 370-6690
Barb Tumer (801) 598-7907
Fran Fulton (267) 275-4479

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  • Who: ADAPT
  • What: Disability Rights Activits to Descend on Utah
  • Where: Salt Lake City, Utah
  • When: September 26-October 1, 2015

Activists from across the country will be in Salt Lake City September 26-October 1 to bring attention to the inadequate services and programs for Utahns with disabilities.

Specifically, the activist will focus on:

  • Pressing Utah to adopt the Community First Choice Option. CFCO allows people with disabilities the option of choosing to remain in their own homes with appropriate community services rather than be forced into a nursing facility.
  • Pressing Utah to Expanding Money Follows the Person (known as the New Choices Waiver) to include persons with intellectual disabilities. Currently, an individual with a disability other than intellectual who is in a nursing facility can transition out after 90 days. People living in an institution designated for individuals with intellectual disabilities, however, do not have access to the same transition funding and must wait several years before being able to move into the community.
  • Pressing Utah to strictly impose the state’s moratorium on building new nursing facilities. Home and community-based services, which allow people with disabilities to remain in their own homes, are severely inadequate in Utah. Thus, people are forced into institutions. When an institution reaches capacity, it requests an exception to the moratorium. The State cannot continue to ignore its own moratorium!
  • Pressing Utah to forward valuable transition information to Utah’s six centers for independent living. People in nursing facilities are asked if they are interested in moving out. If yes, they are asked if they need assistance. No one knows where this information goes. It should be forward to the CILs, which are experts in helping people transition into the community.
  • Pressing Utah to adopt Medicaid Expansion: Governor Gary Herbert developed a plan, which was approved by the federal government and passed by the Utah Senate. However, the Utah house has not passed it.

ADAPT is the national grassroots advocacy organization that focuses on the civil rights of people with disabilities. Nearly 200 people with cross-disabilities will come to Salt Lake City to help their brothers and sisters gain the freedom of living in their own homes with services and supports in the community.

Spearheading this national effort is Barb Toomer, one of the original organizers of ADAPT in 1983. The 86 year-old disability rights activists is a veteran of more than 50 national actions across the country including a 144 mile March by people with disabilities from Philadelphia, PA to Washington, D.C. in 2003.

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