Government Relations & Advocacy

InVision Human Services is grateful to Governor Josh Shapiro and the Pennsylvania General Assembly for acknowledging and investing in the needs of intellectual disability and autism (ID/A) programs in the 2024-25 Pennsylvania state budget.
 

What does the new budget mean for the ID/A community?

To better understand the ramifications of this new $355M investment, we encourage you to take a few minutes to read through the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editorial Board's extremely helpful explainer article! It concisely explains what the recently passed budget means for those with ID/A on the waiting list as well as DSP wages. Key points within the article include: 
 

• It makes significant investments to eliminate the state's 6,000-person-long emergency wait list over the course of the next five years.
• The first pool of $74.8 million will immediately provide support waivers for 1,500 people. 
• Another combined $280 million in state and federal funds will be used to boost reimbursement rates for an effective 7% increase to DSP wages. We advocated for 12% but 7% is a solid starting point for 2024-25. 
• In total, this represents the largest investment in disability services and DSP wages in the commonwealth’s history and should be celebrated as such, but more work is still to be done to stabilize everything in the coming years. 

The Commonwealth’s 2024-25 budget reflects years of advocacy and persistence from families and supporters of the ID/A community. InVision’s Ruth Siegfried, Kim Love, Gary Blumenthal, and others within our InVision government advocacy team have been instrumental in making sure this has been in the forefront of ID/A issues throughout PA’s news outlets and at the Capitol in Harrisburg. The Provider Alliance and many other provider associations throughout PA worked with Gov. Shapiro, and will continue to do so.