DRCT’s SPRING APPEAL
Help Us Reach Our $25,000 Goal!
May 31, 2024
Dear Friend,
I write to ask for your support of Disability Rights Connecticut (DRCT) to increase its capacity to advocate the rights of children and adults with disabilities in Connecticut. DRCT’s goal is to raise $25,000 that will be used to advocate for increased access to urgently needed services including: health, mental health, community-based long-term care services, and education, among others.
Here are a few examples of the ways in which DRCT is helping people with disabilities this year:
In March, DRCT and its community partner, Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) published a report resulting from a joint investigation finding extensive failures of the State and school districts to ensure that students with disabilities placed at High Road Schools, private out-of-district placements throughout Connecticut, are receiving all of the special education and related services to which they are entitled and are protected from neglect. You can read the report on DRCT’s website at: https://bit.ly/high-road-report.
In January, DRCT, and its co-counsel from the law firm of Brown, Goldstein & Levy successfully represented a woman who was the first publicly elected official in the country who is a person with autism and is deaf in a disability discrimination case. The woman was denied reasonable modifications and effective communications by the Town of Enfield and its Board of Education preventing her from meaningfully participating in school committee activities and carrying out her responsibilities as school board member. DRCT and its co-counsel filed the lawsuit for violations of her rights in federal court in 2019. The case went to trial in federal court in early January 2024 which resulted in a jury rendering a verdict in favor of the Plaintiff finding the Town of Enfield and its School Board liable for intentionally discriminating against our client in violation of federal disability anti-discrimination law.
DRCT has also been working hard to make sure that people with disabilities have access to needed health, mental health, and community-based long-term care, and other services. For example, DRCT is working with a coalition of advocates, including self-advocates, to compel private wheelchair companies to change their practices and policies to ensure that individuals who use wheelchairs and need them repaired, can timely obtain these repairs. DRCT is also leading a coalition of advocates to stop Medicare insurance providers from engaging in false and misleading advertising about the services covered by their plans.
Thus far this year, DRCT has also participated in 20 community engagement events, including events focused on serving under and unserved communities, throughout Connecticut. To learn more about the work that DRCT has done over the past year, please watch the video using the QR Code to the right.
Although DRCT has accomplished a lot since its fiscal year began, there is much more that DRCT needs to do but we need your help. With your support, for example, DRCT can substantially increase its policy advocacy to increase state oversight of the provision of special education services to students with disabilities by school districts to ensure that they are receiving all the educational services to which they are legally entitled and are free from abuse and neglect. It will also help DRCT expand its reach to serve people with disabilities individually through DRCT’s existing legal clinics including housing, voting, supported decision-making, and education clinics and enable DRCT to launch a new legal clinic to assist people who have been denied access to accessible healthcare services.
Helping DRCT is easy —
Just go to DRCT’s website at www.disrightsct.org/donate, using the QR Code here or send a check payable to Disability Rights Connecticut to:
Disability Rights Connecticut
75 Charter Oak Avenue Suite 1-101
Hartford, CT 06106
DRCT is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. All donations are tax deductible. We are grateful for your support.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Deborah Dorfman
Executive Director/Attorney, DRCT
