advocacy
Pioneers in Advocacy
Harc, Inc. advocates for the human and civil rights of people with intellectual disabilities and their families so they can live their best lives with the support they need to be as independent as possible.
Harc educates policymakers, key stakeholders, and the community about the needs of the people we support and advocates for legislation that furthers our mission.
Each year Harc establishes an Advocacy Agenda identifying the barriers that prevent people from achieving independence, full community involvement, and appropriate services.
Our Advocacy Priorities
✓ Legislative Ask: In collaboration with the CT Nonprofit Alliance, protect funding increases approved in the enacted budget and appropriate an additional $155 million for community services in FY27. With this funding, the state can: Give all community services the same increase that the enacted budget provides to DDS residential programs in FY27. Fully fund the Medicaid rate increases for behavioral health services recommended by the state’s rate study, which showed CT is spending less than half of what it should to keep up with comparable states. Increase Room & Board rates for DDS residential programs.
✓ Impact: Stabilizes and appropriately funds the community nonprofit network to prevent service disruption and support all individual needs.
✓ Legislative Ask: Establish in law a cost-based rate methodology for DDS-contracted services and formally adopt the Consumer Price Index–linked COLA scheduled to begin with the next biennial budget. Require that the COLA be maintained in statute to ensure predictability and continuity across budget cycles. Require annual reporting to the Appropriations Committee on rate adequacy, COLA implementation, and any deviations from the established methodology.
✓ Impact: Creates predictable, sustainable funding, reduces service disruptions, and helps providers plan responsibly for staffing and program needs.
✓ Legislative Ask: Establish a dedicated HCBS Stabilization Fund to provide bridge grants for workforce recruitment and retention, emergency provider support, and targeted investments in training and assistive technology. Define governance, eligible uses, and a biennial appropriation mechanism.
✓ Impact: Provides short-term flexibility to respond to provider crises while longer-term rate reforms take hold.
✓ Legislative Ask: Set a phased target to increase Medicaid waiver slots and require DDS to publish quarterly waitlist, placement, and utilization data. Require an annual plan to reduce wait times.
✓ Impact: Reduces waiting lists, improves family planning, and increases accountability.
✓ Legislative Ask: Fund enhanced wages, specialty pay differentials, and professional development for Direct Support Professionals who support individuals with complex needs, including profound autism, medical fragility, dementia, and significant behavioral or psychiatric challenges. Recognize Direct Support Professionals as a distinct human services profession and support career ladders, credentialing, and specialty roles.
✓ Impact: Improves safety, retention, and quality of care while aligning compensation with skill, responsibility, and physical demands.
✓ Legislative Ask: Create an Accessible Housing Trust to fund adaptive home modifications, SMART technology, remote monitoring, and digital health supports, and to provide incentives for developers to build accessible units.
Include matching funds and priority criteria for individuals transitioning from institutional or higher-acuity settings.
✓ Impact: Expands independent living options, extends workforce capacity through technology, and reduces pressure on residential systems.
✓ Legislative Ask: Authorize a state tax credit or wage subsidy for small and medium-sized employers that hire people with I/DD into employment positions, paired with state-funded job coaching and placement grants administered through DDS or a designated workforce agency.
✓ Impact: Encourages employment and supports sustainable employer partnerships.
✓ Legislative Ask: Authorize and fund a limited number of medically supported, community-based Community Living Arrangements (CLAs) for aging adults with I/DD who require ongoing nursing care, dementia supports, or complex medical oversight. These CLAs should remain small in scale, fully integrated into local communities, and designed to allow individuals to age in place within the existing DDS residential system. Include a pilot phase with geographic diversity and required outcome reporting to the General Assembly.
✓ Impact: Allows individuals to age safely within familiar community-based CLAs, prevents inappropriate nursing home placements, reduces hospitalizations, and provides families with humane, realistic options as needs change.
✓ Legislative Ask: Require Medicaid-participating healthcare providers to complete regular I/DD and autism competency training as a condition of state contracting. Create a grant program to equip medical practices with accessible exam rooms and adaptive equipment.
✓ Impact: Improves health outcomes, reduces avoidable hospitalizations, and ensures providers can meet the needs of people with significant physical disabilities.
✓ Legislative Ask: Fund targeted scholarships, loan repayment, apprenticeships, and clinical training programs for critical HCBS professions, including Direct Support Professionals, nurses, occupational and physical therapists, and behavioral support staff. Require a biennial review of wage parity relative to market demand.
✓ Impact: Strengthens recruitment and retention and aligns public investment with workforce realities.
✓ Legislative Ask: Preserve the Birth-to-Three General Administrative Payment (GAP) in statute as a separate and protected funding line. Direct the Office of Early Childhood to implement provider reimbursement rates aligned with the most recent Birth-to-Three cost study to reflect the true cost of delivering services and sustaining a licensed and credentialed early intervention workforce. Require ongoing, periodic rate reviews to prevent erosion of purchasing power, support workforce retention, and ensure timely access to services for eligible children and families.
✓ Impact: Prevents service disruptions, stabilizes the early intervention workforce, and ensures infants and toddlers receive timely, high-quality supports during critical developmental years.
Have a Harc Day
Held every year, typically on Valentine’s Day, Have a Harc Day brings together Harc individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), their families, and supporters at the Connecticut State Capitol for a day of advocacy and connection. This meaningful event highlights Harc’s mission while engaging policymakers, who hear firsthand about the impact that funding and supportive policies have on individuals with IDD and their families.
Why Valentine’s Day? We chose Valentine’s Day to emphasize the heart behind our mission and the importance of compassionate support for people of all abilities. Have a Harc Day is a day of both advocacy and love—love for community, inclusion, and a brighter future for everyone.
What Happens on Have a Harc Day? Each Have a Harc Day offers participants the opportunity to:
- Meet and engage with Connecticut legislators who shape policies impacting the IDD community
- Share personal stories that illustrate the importance of access, funding, and inclusive opportunities
- Stand together with family members, staff, and advocates to amplify the voices of individuals with IDD
What’s Happening? Harc’s Self-Advocates Club
Harc’s Self-Advocacy Group, What’s Happening, empowers people with intellectual disabilities to have a voice in their community.
Participants advocate for the services they need to live more self determined lives. Self-Advocates help train new employees, advise Harc’s boards and committees, influence public policy and Harc’s advocacy agenda, and share their stories.
The group meets on the second Tuesday of the month, from 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM, September through June, at Harc’s headquarters at 900 Asylum Ave, Hartford, CT.
To learn more about What's Happening, contact Harc.
How Can You get involved?
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Attend our legislative events.
- Contact your elected officials about issues of concern to you and your family. Find your elected officials here.
- To invite and coordinate a tour of Harc with your legislator, please click here.
Accessing Harc’s Services
Regardless of the town of residence, each family has a choice of provider agencies in their area. To request Harc as your provider for disability support services, visit the 2-1-1 website or call Harc.
For more information, please contact us.