Dear friend,

With new resources, new opportunities, and new ways our community is supporting our work, we’re celebrating the newness of spring here at ASAN! Check out what we’ve been up to this month and how we’re ushering in the next one.

We started the month on a somber note with our annual Disability Day of Mourning. Our community came together with vigils across the country and the world to remember those we’ve lost to filicide, or the murder of a family member. You can read more about our DC vigil, virtual vigil, and the many other vigils here.

On March 17th, the Home- and Community-Based Services (HCBS) Settings Rule went into effect. This Rule is all about our right to receive services that are truly community-based and that respect our rights, rather than being stuck in “institutions in disguise.” It’s important to know your rights so you can make full use of them! That’s why we have released new plain language and Easy Read resources all about the Settings Rule. We have also updated our previous resources on the Rule to make sure they are still helpful! Check out our resources on the Settings Rule here. We also hosted a webinar to talk about how the HCBS Settings Rule can protect our rights around long term services and support in our homes and communities. You can check out the webinar here.

This month also marked the release of the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network report, which we responded to here. The report shows that better recognition of autism and continued efforts to reduce racial and gender disparities have caused rates of diagnosis to continue to rise. However, there is still more work to do to address the remaining disparities in diagnosis.

In an increasingly transphobic legislative climate, we also have work to do to prevent autism diagnoses from being used to deny gender-affirming care. ASAN released a statement condemning Georgia Bill SB140 and other attempts to deny gender-affirming health care to young transgender people, sometimes especially to those who are also autistic or have other disabilities. We are deeply troubled by any use of autism as a justification for transphobic efforts that would create barriers to care.

With meetings four times a year, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee or IACC will meet in early April. We submitted comments for this April meeting updating IACC about the #StopTheShock efforts and encouraging them to take an active role in that and in guiding the implementation of the HCBS Settings Rule. We also supported the reintroduction of the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act (TCIEA). TCIEA would end subminimum wage for disabled people over the next five years. 

We had five charity runners in the United Airlines NYC half marathon on Sunday the 19th, and all five finished! They also raised $6,924 for us! Our next race fundraising event is the 2023 Marine Corps Marathon! If you’d like to run for ASAN, contact [email protected].

We’re also celebrating everyone who supported us in our 2022 end-of-the-year giving campaign with our promised phone smash video! This is a callback to one of our earlier GivingTuesday campaigns. It’s no secret that many autistic folks hate making phone calls, and the ASAN office is no different! So we took it into our own hands… check out what we came up with here!

As we say goodbye to March and welcome Autism Acceptance Month, we have so many good things in store for you and our community to celebrate acceptance, accessibility, and neurodiversity! Your continued support makes our work this month — and every month — possible. Thank you for everything you do to make sure that when it comes to the policies that affect our lives, there will be nothing about us, without us!

In solidarity,
The Team at ASAN