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WHAT WE DO
Advocacy & Public Policy
Disability rights are human rights!
Advocacy is not just about policy—it’s about people. It’s about ensuring that Oklahomans with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have a voice, access to essential services, and the ability to live with dignity and independence.
Without strong advocacy, individuals with IDD face barriers to education, healthcare, and employment. They may be denied basic civil rights or left vulnerable to abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Our Public Policy & Advocacy Program works to remove these barriers, hold policymakers accountable, and create lasting change at both the individual and systemic levels.
We track legislation, mobilize self-advocates and families, and influence public policy to ensure that all Oklahomans with IDD:
✔ Have equal opportunities to learn, work, and live independently.
✔ Receive the supports they need to thrive in their communities.
✔ Are protected from discrimination, segregation, and mistreatment.
Your voice matters! Join us in shaping policies that improve lives.
Everyone Deserves Access Coalition
Access to mental health care is a right, not a privilege. Yet, individuals with IDD continue to face systemic barriers to crisis services, therapy, and psychiatric care.
To address this, The Arc launched the Everyone Deserves Access Coalition—a statewide movement advocating for better mental health services, crisis intervention, and caregiver support. This coalition has already blocked harmful policy changes that would have restricted inpatient psychiatric coverage for individuals with IDD.
Join our coalition and help us break down barriers to care.
Learn More About our Policy Priorities
All branches of government play critical roles in affirming, securing, and achieving the vision of inclusion and ensuring that the civil rights of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are realized.
Learn about the top issues we focus on in our fight for the civil rights of Oklahomans with IDD.
Civil Rights
Civil rights must be preserved through vigilant enforcement of laws and regulations as well as strong opposition to efforts that limit the rights of people with IDD.
Education
The education system must help people with IDD to achieve their full potential and independence by having high expectations, integrated instruction by certified and effective teachers, inclusive classrooms, appropriate assessments, and only using positive behavioral supports.
Community-Based Long Term Supports & Services
These must be widely accessible, consumer controlled, and provided in the community without the requirement that people with IDD impoverish themselves in order to obtain assistance with activities of daily living, such as getting dressed, taking medication, and preparing meals.
Emergency Management
The needs of people with disabilities, their families, and the direct support workforce must be considered as a priority in planning for and responding to natural, public health, and human-made disasters and emergencies.
Direct Support Professionals
These professionals must be well trained and fairly and adequately compensated to provide the necessary supports and services for people with IDD where they work and live.
Employment, Training,
and Wages
Employment programs must be expanded to provide more job development, placement, and coaching, skills training, and other services necessary to help find and maintain competitive, integrated employment for people with IDD.
Family Support
Counseling, support groups, respite, training, cash assistance, and information and referral must be made widely available to family caregivers, especially those who are aging, and who provide supports in the community. This will help avoid costly and unwanted institutional placements of individuals with IDD.
Health Care
People with IDD must have timely access to high quality, comprehensive, accessible, affordable, and individualized health care services to improve and maintain health and functioning.
Housing
An adequate supply of safe, accessible, integrated, and affordable supportive housing in the community for people with IDD must be available.
Medicaid
This program is the single largest funding source of both acute health care and long term supports and services for people with IDD. It must be preserved and rebalanced to make home and community based services the norm and institutional services the exception.
Research & Training
There is a need for more comprehensive federal research, surveillance, analysis, education, and training concerning people with IDD across the lifespan.
Social Security & SSI
​This system provides the primary income sources for many people with significant disabilities to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing. Benefits and eligibility must be maintained and the long-term financial future of these programs must be considered outside of deficit reduction efforts.
Tax Revenue
Sufficient tax revenue must be raised in order to appropriately fund social insurance (Social Security, Medicare), safety net (Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI)), and discretionary programs (such as housing, education, employment, and transportation) that people with IDD rely on for their health, safety, and wellbeing.
Technology
Technology must be accessible and made widely available to make communication, education, independent living, and employment opportunities available for people with IDD.
Transportation
Accessible transportation programs must be expanded and anti-discrimination policies must be enforced to help people with IDD access employment, health care, recreational activities, and other aspects of community living.
