OCALI Team Sharing Ohio’s Work With Other States
To continue learning from other state policy leaders, Melissa Bacon, OCALI Office of Policy, and Danny Gruber, OCALI Impact Office, recently attended the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs Peer-to-Peer Exchange focused on data and autism policy in Madison, Wisconsin. Representatives of the Ohio Department of Health, Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities and the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD) of the University of Cincinnati also attended the exchange.
The Ohio Team shared the state’s success with collective impact in the work of the Interagency Work Group on Autism, highlighting the “Pursing Quality Lives” report released in May 2018 as well as the data tools that the group leverages for state policy development. The meeting also focused on the critical role of family in policy development. Representatives discussed the “Charting the Lifecourse Community of Practice” work led by the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities and the UCEDD.
“Learning from other state’s best practices and policy development is an excellent and important opportunity to develop better policy in Ohio,” said Melissa Bacon. “While Ohio is a leader in collective impact leadership, there is always work to be done to improve the lives of those with autism and learning from other state leaders is critical to this work.”
New Legislative Caucus Focused on Serving Ohioans with Disabilities
The Ohio General Assembly recently created the Ohio Developmental Disabilities Caucus, a bipartisan effort, the caucus aims to bring the state’s many partners together into the same room to further lawmakers’ education and find innovative ways to better serve the 90,000 Ohioans living with disabilities and their families.
During the month of April, the caucus held its first meeting, joined by a room full of advocates, members of the General Assembly, members of Governor DeWine’s Administration and staff for a very informative session. During the meeting, OCALI’s own Teresa Kobelt provided an overview of Ohio’s Developmental Disability System. Additionally, the caucus welcomed Director Jeff Davis, who recently took over as the head of the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities.
OCALI Now 