Monday, March 24, 2014

Illinois Home Healthcare workers provide care for people with Disabilities - have had no wage increase for 6 years - IMMEDIATE ACTION

below is a message from The Arc of Illinois ...

Governor Quinn,
The State of Illinois has delegated its responsibility to provide care for more than 23,000 individuals with developmental disabilities to nonprofit agencies.  But state funding to these service providers has not increased for six years now.  As a result, dedicated employees earn average wages of just $9.35 per hour - 21% below the poverty level for a family of four.  I urge you to include funding in your FY 15 budget plan for a $1/hour wage increase for these employees and to support HB3698/SB2604 to set our state on a path to lift them out of poverty.

Also join us in the Capitol on Wednesday, March 26th at 9:30 for our Day in the Capitol.
.




Tony Paulauski

Executive Director
The Arc of Illinois
20901 S. LaGrange Rd. Suite 209
Frankfort, IL 60423


#####

The Arc needs your help today and tomorrow (March 24 & 25)  to assist the Care Campaign in its efforts to increase wages for Direct Support Professionals.

The Care Campaign Steering Committee has determined the next step in our efforts to obtain the DSP wage increase is to deluge the Governor with emails from families, workers and persons with disabilities urging him (in their own words) to include the wage increase in his budget and support the bills for it that have been introduced. Each of the supporting organizations have agreed to concentrate their membership on this task including:  IARF, Don Moss & Associates, this week, the Institute on Public Policy, The Arc of Illinois the final week before the Governor’s Proposed State Budget comes out. 

Since you may belong to more than one of our organizations, you may receive this request more than once, but we sincerely hope you will generate as many individual emails to the Governor next Monday, March 24th and Tuesday, March 25th.

All emails should be addressed to: Pat.Quinn@illinois.gov

No comments:

Post a Comment