The Best Life Alliance needs your help to build a sustainable workforce

Here are some ways you can get involved

The Best Life Alliance (BLA) has released a one page document entitled “Building a Sustainable Workforce to Support People with Disabilities” and a link in this article will connect you to their website for more information and updates during the 2020 legislative session.  Please note, until the bills are officially jacketed, this document has placeholders for the actual bill numbers that will be used in the 2020 session.

As a provider it is not too late to invite your Senator and Representative to visit your program.  This visit could include observing clients participating in life enrichment activities, clients engaged in center-based work, a discussion of client work crew and direct-hire placements, and a meeting with clients to hear their concerns and issues.  As part of this visit you could share the BLA document for the legislator to take with them and, if it supports the legislative initiatives, perhaps share the average wage, number of open positions, and turnover rate for DSPs in your program.

If you cannot schedule your Senator and/or Representative to visit, you may wish to send them an email with the BLA document as an attachment along with a message about the average wage, number of open positions, and turnover rates for DSPs in your program.  Please consider asking if the legislator is supportive of raising DSP wages and, if yes, can you share their name with the BLA.

Finally, you may want to submit an article to your local paper using language and numbers from the BLA document so our lobbying efforts are not diminished by conflicting messages.  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. can either help draft your article or review your draft article before it is submitted to the local paper.

From the 2019 session we know that the only chance we have to improve DSP wages comes from providers across the state informing their Senators and Representatives about how this impacts their local community.

Join us on March 28 for Disability Services Day at the Capitol.