Share Your Story! Help Early Intervention Be Recognized!

State Government Information:

I am compiling a "book" of stories about how Early Intervention has impacted the families in our community.  Please share your story and a picture of your family.  These stories will be used to promote the importance of Early Intervention services to our state legislators.  A large chunk of our funding comes from state money and I think it is important to keep those who award us that funding informed about the good that it does.

Please write a paragraph or two about the impact of early intervention services on your family and your little ones.  You can email your story to me at mzeschke@dsdmail.net.

Federal Government Information:

We are once again dealing with the threat of sequestration.  Sequestration is the 2011 law that mandates $1 trillion in automatic, across the board annual budget cuts, when congress can't agree on a budget plan.  In 2013, the "Murray-Ryan" deal temporarily stopped these cuts from occurring, but that deal expires in fiscal year 2016.

These cuts would be devastating for special education and early intervention because our programs are part of the Non-Defense Discretionary category which includes education, special education, all disability services, Head Start, veterans, rehab, housing assistance, WIC, etc.  Non-Defense Discretionary funding is only about 17% of the federal budget, but these are the only programs where cuts can be made because the remained of the budget (defense, social security, health care, etc.) is mandatory.  If Congress doesn't stop sequestration, we are going to be in pretty bad shape.

You can write to your elected officials in Washington!  You can fill out the name/address contact information on the link below and letters to your congressional representatives and senator will be automatically populated.

http://capwiz.com/cek/home