What You Can Do Right Now

As we continue navigating the fallout from the recent DDA cuts in the approved budget, our collective voice has never been more important. We are actively moving into the next phase of advocacy, including multiple levels of government engagement, legal discussions, and media outreach, and we need your help to ensure the reality of this crisis is fully seen and understood.

Below are several meaningful ways you can take action right now:

1.  As You Communicate with the DDA (Critical Step)

If you are reaching out to the DDA regarding the challenges you are facing, we strongly encourage you to:

  • CC your local legislators on your email

This ensures they are directly aware of what is happening and allows them to see how the DDA responds.

  • BCC Concerned Citizens (if you are comfortable)

This helps us maintain a record of communications as we continue federal/legal discussions and continue working with state and national media.

Your real experiences matter and documentation of those experiences can be powerful.

2.  Contact Your Legislators

Please contact legislators using our template which you can find here. This will allow you to:

  • Ask legislators directly:

    • What immediate actions are being taken to support the financial and wellness of the self-directed community with this crisis?

    • What are they willing to do or can do moving forward in the coming weeks to ensure stability for the self-directed community?

  • Share your personal story and impact

  • Highlight the real-life crisis our community is facing

  • Reference the survey data we’ve collected

We encourage everyone to click use our template and make it your own. Personal stories are what drive change.

As you get feedback, we highly encourage you to share it with us via email at [email protected].  Please include the legislator and/or staff names and information that would help us understand what actions are in progress or they suggested.

3.  Share Opportunities & Resources

We need your eyes and ears across the community:

  • Know of an upcoming event with legislators? Let us know so we can share the information.

  • Planning something locally? We want to support and amplify.

  • Found resources (local, state, or federal) that could help families right now? Please share.

This is a community effort, and information-sharing is key.

4.  Sign-Up for One of Our Workgroups

Sign-up for one of our workgroups, which will be launching shortly and will be essential to our next phase of coordinated efforts. These will include areas such as securing resources for the community, public relations, legal, fundraising, and government relations.

 https://www.ccsdsmd.org/workgroups

 5.  Complete and Share the Surveys

If you have not already done so, please take a few minutes to complete the following:

●       NBC News National Survey:

https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=-SY1T9aXLUGTOk4wpzEQ9IGW K-LyUNVBqVyJB48y6JpUN0hCTFQyVUlRT1ZNVjhHNVVLWURNTUlaWS4u&origin=lpr Link&route=shorturl&fbclid=IwY2xjawRQisRleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFIdDlHT01acG 43RDNKVVJjc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHh-uPeoKoW-uv2 nK7yjhfzreiOYjTvweLUq0U0FUUWVhTor659c9uWqIHXAo_aem_SC4P4gixHqoFTVAotu Vvbw

●       Concerned Citizens Community Survey on the Impact of the Cuts:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CCSDSMDresources

These surveys are critical in helping us present real data to policymakers, media, and legal or federal representatives.

6. Donate to Concerned Citizens

With the immediate impact of DDA budget cuts, our workgroups are stepping in to do the critical work to continue to make our voices heard.  This includes helping coordinating crisis response and protecting families at risk though continued advocacy, legal, government and public relations as well as community support. This work requires resources now. Your support will directly fund the efforts of these workgroups as they advocate, organize, and continue to raise our voices. Please consider making a donation today by visiting ccsdsmd.org/donate and contributing to sustain this urgent, community-driven work.

7. About Our Facebook Page

Our Facebook page is now private.  We are in process developing communications channels for our Phase 2 discussions. Stay tuned for more information. In the meantime, please keep posts respectful understanding we have a very diverse community who read our page.

8.  Attend Concerned Citizens Community Meeting 

We invite you to join us for our community-wide meetings, where we will:

  • Share the latest updates

  • Outline next steps as we move further into Phase 2 of our advocacy efforts. 

If you have other suggestions or questions, please send us an email at [email protected]. We appreciate your support, great or small, to help move the community forward. We are better, together!