Autism Advocacy Day 2025
The Autism Society of Texas hosted over 175 people at the Capitol in Austin this past Monday, March 31st for Autism Advocacy Day. A few months ago, I signed myself up to participate, both with a spirit of absolute excitement and a wild amount of nervous energy! But leaving the Capitol on Monday, I was overwhelmed in the best way with inspiration.
People from all over Texas were a part of the folks chatting with legislative offices for Autism Advocacy Day. There were parents, educators, clinicians, self-advocates, and so much more.
Headed into the South entrance of the Capitol on Monday morning!
As I prepared for the day, listening to some of the Zoom meetings that the Autism Society hosted, I left feeling both inspired and a little angry, if I’m being honest. Sometimes I listened to what we’d be advocating for and I was like “how are we doing this in 2025?!?! How has it not been done?!?!” That mix of emotions continued with me throughout most of Monday, sometimes feeling super excited and passionate, other times feeling angry and sad. Our kids and adults with Autism deserve so much more than they’re getting, but after hearing from the Autism Society and Disability Rights of Texas speakers, it was refreshing to see that we have made some progress in recent years also. So thank you to those wonderful organizations for the work they do!
After spending the morning learning about some of the bills and information about the budget that we would be prioritizing in our drop-in meetings, we went off in groups to stop into offices. In many offices, we discussed what we were in support or opposition of with interns, while in another office we spoke with a Legislative Director.
Curious what we chatted about regarding Special Education? Here you go:
Fully Funding Special Education: Did you know there is a $1.7 BILLION deficit in special education funding annually….in a state that currently has a $24 BILLION budget surplus?
Moving to a Service Intensity Model of funding distribution for Special Education services - meaning that the amount of funding a school would receive for a child in special education would be based on the level of support and services that the school is providing to that student. This makes sense given that not every student in Special Education requires the same level of need.
Providing funding to implement our teachers and school personnel with additional tools and supports, such as Crisis Prevention and intervention training to be able to have strategies for deescalation of children with special needs. This would have so many positive impacts and reduce the need for unnecessary disciplinary measures, particularly for students with Autism and other disabilities.
With the Legislative Director for Rep. Richard Hayes, who was open to conversations about ABA and Special Education.
We also talked about the budget…
We didn’t stop at Special Education, although we could have spent all day talking about those challenges. We also discussed a couple aspects of the budget:
Increasing funding to support raising the rates for ABA Services as funded through Medicaid. Did you know that Texas Medicaid didn’t fully cover ABA services until 2022?? Also, one stat that was thrown out on Monday is that nearly 60,000 kids with Autism have Medicaid and of those 60,000 children, only 1500 were able to access ABA services last year. That’s less than 3%.
With this increase in rates for ABA services, folks are hoping that there will be an increase in providers accepting Medicaid, minimizing wait lists and improving access to care.
What else was discussed?
Our group didn’t tackle other issues in our chats, but other groups set off to talk to representative offices about things like the Community Attendant wages. If you think this doesn’t matter to you now because your child is too young, you’ll want to know about this for when your child becomes an adult. Basically, these folks are wildly underpaid. The negative impacts of this mean staff shortages and high staff turnover, amongst many other things. Having these attendants available and trained to support adults with autism who have significant needs is really important. It’s my firm belief that increasing their wages would have long-term positive impacts on adults with disabilities.
Believe it or not, with as long as this blog post is, there were a variety of other topics that were also advocated for in meetings! I encourage you to check out the Autism Society of Texas website for more information.
Many of the offices were decorated to reflect the personalities of the Representative in that office!
Want to get involved?
If you ever want to be a rookie-advocate, fumbling your way through chatting with staff in a state representative’s office to advocate for children and adults with Autism with me, please reach out. This is only the beginning of my journey with this type of advocacy work and for as nerve-wracking as the experience was on Monday, it was one that has left me feeling even more passionate about these causes.
Join us on April 26th for the Autism Walk!
If you want to be involved right away in supporting the Autism Society of Texas and their work, join us for their walk on the morning of April 26th. You can register here! Let me know if you plan to attend so I can keep an eye out for you.
