Epsiode 172: National Disability & Home Care Rights Coalition

Ongoing Support

Jul 24

An in-depth conversation with Teresa Sweeney, co-founder of the National Disability and Home Care Rights Coalition, about emerging threats to disability rights and home- and community-based services (HCBS) in the United States.

Sweeney explains that the coalition formed to unite disabled people, families, and organizations across diagnoses, waiver systems, and states in defense of civil rights protections rooted in the ADA, Olmstead, Section 504, HCBS, privacy, due process, caregiver rights, and equal dignity, amid growing fractures within disability communities and state-level erosion of these protections.

The discussion centers on a Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel memorandum stating that Section 504 and the ADA do not impose a general integration mandate on states, thereby allowing states to fail to meet the HCBS provisions needed by persons with disabilities to live in the community and increasing the risk of institutionalization.

Sweeney highlights the Latonya Reeves Freedom Act as a critical federal civil rights proposal that would create an enforceable statutory right to community living and stronger protections for people needing long-term services and supports, and urges listeners to contact their federal legislators to support and co-sponsor the bill.

The episode also examines how narratives of “fraud, waste, and abuse” in Medicaid are used to foment public hostility towards marginalized communities despite the program’s role as a vital social safety net from birth to death for people who cannot otherwise obtain or afford health insurance.

The episode concludes with a call for broad, unified advocacy, including engagement with the coalition’s unity statement and related resources, to defend the right of disabled people to live, work, and participate in their communities rather than being forced into institutions.

Your link to the full-length episode of this episode on the Raising Kellan Podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.