Advocacy Resources

Advocacy is not a personality trait. It is a set of documents, deadlines, and phone calls, and all of it can be learned.

This category holds the tools: templates and scripts for legislators, agencies, and providers, bill trackers, what other states have won and how they won it, watchlists of services under threat, and the data worth bringing into a meeting. Written for the parent who has never testified at anything and would rather not have to start now.

Housing for Adults with Significant Behavioral Challenges

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides Level 2/3 Autism

Housing for Adults with Significant Behavioral Challenges When providers say “we can’t take him,” the answer is rarely about him. The answer is usually about their staffing and their behavior-support...

Advocacy Resources Comparison Tools How-To Guides Service Models

Group Homes, Supported Living, Shared Living, Intentional Communities Four housing models compared on the four variables that actually matter: autonomy, staffing, cost structure, and who controls the lease. Plus the...

Advocacy Resources How-To Guides Medicaid Waiting Lists

Understanding Long Waitlists and What to Do While You Wait The HCBS waiver waitlist is rationing dressed in administrative language. The wait is real, the wait is long, and the...

Advocacy Resources How-To Guides Medicaid Waiting Lists

Medicaid Waivers and HCBS Basics What a waiver actually is, what “level of care” really means, why waiting lists exist, and the questions every caregiver should walk into the first...

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

Financial Scams and Exploitation Targeting Adults with Disabilities Red flags, prevention, credit freezes, safe spending tools, and how to report. Why adults with disabilities are targeted more often, what the...

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

Divorce, Remarriage, and Blended-Family Planning How household changes ripple through three planning systems at once: federal benefits, the caregiving plan, and the estate. A guide for separating, remarrying, and blended-family...

Adult Transition Advocacy Resources How-To Guides Medicaid

The “Benefits Cliff”: Work, Medicaid, and Keeping Supports How part-time work actually affects SSI and Medicaid, why the cliff is mostly a wall built by misinformation, and the federal work...

Adult Transition Advocacy Resources How-To Guides

Representative Payee Basics What a rep payee actually does, how the SSA application works, what the annual report demands, and why this narrow tool is not a substitute for a...

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

What Grandparents and Extended Family Need to Know About Inheritance A plain-language guide for the relatives who love your adult and want to leave them something. Why a direct gift...

Advocacy Resources Comparison Tools How-To Guides Medicaid

ABLE Accounts vs Special Needs Trusts (and the $2,000 SSI Asset Limit) Two saving instruments, one cliff. SSI’s $2,000 asset limit has not moved since 1989. ABLE accounts and SNTs...