Please help Delawareans with intellectual and developmental disabilities by asking your representatives in Dover to support HB 104 – The McNesby Act.
Please ask the Governor and your representatives in the Delaware General Assembly to pass House Bill 104 – now known as the Michael McNesby Full Funding for Adults with I/DD Act. The McNesby Act will deliver $9 million in state funding to programs for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the next state budget.
The Michael McNesby Full Funding for Adults with I/DD Act (HB 104) will ensure that funding for services is brought up to levels recommended by the Department of Health and Social Services over the next 3 years. Currently, funding is inadequate, which stresses the entire system and could put adults receiving services in danger. The lack of proper funding means that the Direct Support Professionals that deliver services are underpaid, which leads to employee turnover, which can diminish the quality of the care.
About Michael McNesby
Michael McNebsy was born in 1960 with Down syndrome. It was a time when society was unsure of what to do with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Michael’s parents chose inclusion for Michael, and he had a rich, happy life. He passed away on March 26th of this year, surrounded by loved ones. Hundreds of people attended his funeral.
Michael had the luxury of being born into a large family, and after his parents passed, his brothers and sisters were there to support him. Not everyone has this same safety net.
The Michael McNesby Full Funding for Adults with I/DD Act will provide the funding to support these individuals-and help adults with I/DD contribute to society and live a life as rewarding as Michael’s.
For additional information, visit http://www.mcnesbyact.com/ orhttp://www.abilitynetworkde.org/
“The starting point for every reflection on disability is rooted in the fundamental convictions of Christian anthropology: even when disabled persons are mentally impaired or when their sensory or intellectual capacity is damaged, they are fully human beings and possess the sacred and inalienable rights that belong to every human creature. Indeed, human beings, independently of the conditions in which they live or of what they are able to express, have a unique dignity and a special value from the very beginning of their life until the moment of natural death. … In fact, … it is in the more difficult and disturbing situations that the dignity and grandeur of the human being emerges. The wounded humanity of the disabled challenges us to recognize, accept and promote in each one of these brothers and sisters of ours the incomparable value of the human being created by God.”
~ Saint John Paul II in his Message to the International Symposium on the “Dignity and Rights of the Mentally Disabled Person,” January 5, 2004
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