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A place to belong in Washington., Moses Lake, WA (2026)

08/12/2026

Washington likes to describe itself as a progressive state, and in a lot of ways it is.

We protect reproductive rights and LGBTQ people. We have strong worker protections, paid family and medical leave, paid sick leave, and one of the highest minimum wages in the country. We have made voting easier to access, limited how state and local resources can be used for federal immigration enforcement, and made major investments in climate policy.

You do not have to agree with every one of those policies, or even any of them, to see the bigger point.

Washington is usually pretty comfortable saying that government has a responsibility to protect people, remove barriers, and build systems around the reality of people’s lives.

That is why our approach to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities makes no sense to me.

We say we accept people for who they are, but when we start talking about adults with intellectual disabilities, especially those who need the most support, the choices suddenly become very narrow.

Employment.

Get a job.

Keep looking for a job.

Build the service system around getting a job.

That is where the policy starts running into real life.

For some people, a job coach is not enough. If they need help with toileting, eating, changing clothes, or other personal care, the job coach is not there to do that. Another person has to be there to provide that support.

So now it can take two people to support one person at a job, just to make employment fit the model we have decided is supposed to work for everyone.

This is what “employment first” looks like for the people who needed the most support: 44 percent had no job at all. And remember, even when they did get a job, they averaged only about five hours of work a week.

We already accept that the value of employment cannot be measured only by the paycheck. So why do we suddenly start counting dollars differently when someone needs another kind of support?

Over and over, we are told day programs would be too expensive.

Okay. Money matters.

But other states have found ways to offer more than one option.

Washington could too.

We just have to be willing to admit that employment is not going to work for everyone.

The state does not have unlimited money. That is not political. It is reality.

At what point do the numbers become enough for us to try something different?

When the same group keeps getting left out, eventually we have to stop pretending the model is working. It feels like it’s performative acceptance.

Maybe part of the reason is that the system has become so built around employment that too many people now have something to lose if we change it.

Linda Rolfe, who helped usher in the policy we have today, described it as the expectation that every person with disabilities “can be employed and has the right and responsibility to be employed.”

That tells you exactly how this policy sees people.

When employment becomes a responsibility, people who cannot work are being framed as failing.

They are not failing.

People with intellectual disabilities are not trying to get a free ride.

I think it is incredibly insulting to frame them that way.

A job is not the only measure of a successful life. Plenty of people have changed the world without ever punching a time card. Having a job is not what makes someone valuable.

It is not progressive to accept people only when they fit inside your idea of what success should look like.

08/11/2026

When Miles was little, he loved water, and we lived on a lake.

Even when he knew I would not let him get in, he insisted on going down just to look at it.

He loved the way the water felt around him and the way his body floated.

He also loved throwing his toys into it, much to my irritation when I had to replace nearly every character from Toy Story.

Buzz and Woody were not cheap.

Miles knew that when I was awake, I had Spidey senses. If he stepped one foot closer to the water than he was supposed to, I knew.

And that meant outside time was over, which was the last thing he wanted because being outside was his favorite place to be.

But it was not for lack of trying.

If he thought my guard was down, he would make his move.

When I was awake, my guard was never down.

My child’s life depended on me knowing exactly where he was at all times.

There was no real time when my guard was completely down.

Even when I slept, part of me was still listening for movement, a door opening or any sign that he was awake.

For Miles, and for many autistic people, sleep has never come easily. Even with medication to help, sometimes sleep just doesn’t come.

Living that alert all the time is exhausting, but when your child’s life can depend on noticing something within seconds, it’s what your reality is.

And that fear was not irrational.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has reported that wandering is involved in nearly 74 percent of fatal drowning incidents among autistic children.

When we talk about behaviors in adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, I think we need to be clear about the difference between behaviors that are part of how someone moves through the world and behaviors that create an actual safety concern.

Stimming, pacing, vocalizing or avoiding eye contact may make other people uncomfortable, but for the person doing them, those behaviors may help them regulate, communicate or feel safe. They are not putting themselves or anyone else in danger.

I am talking about behaviors that can put the person themselves at risk.

In July, eleven year old Parker, a nonspeaking autistic boy in Calgary, wandered away from his daycare.

For thirteen days, his family, police and members of the community searched for him.

His body was eventually found inside a network of underground stormwater pipes.

Parker was not just a story in the news or an example in a policy debate. He was a deeply loved child who should have come home and he must have been so cold and scared out there.

But the risk of elopement does not simply disappear when someone turns twenty two and leaves school.

Adults can run into traffic, get into water or simply keep going until no one knows where they are.

There is also the risk of what can happen when an autistic adult encounters law enforcement and does not respond in the way police expect.

Arnaldo Rios was a twenty seven year old autistic man who wandered away from his group home in Florida carrying a toy truck.

Someone called police and reported that he might have a gun.

When police arrived, Arnaldo did not respond to their commands or put the toy down. His support worker was lying on the ground with his hands raised, repeatedly telling officers that Arnaldo was autistic and that it was only a toy.

An officer fired and struck Arnaldo’s support worker instead.

Thankfully, neither Arnaldo nor his support worker were killed.

That situation could have ended very differently.

He was not dangerous.

He was an autistic man who had wandered away and, because of his disability, was not able to respond to the officer’s commands in the way the officer expected him to.

That is the part people need to understand about elopement.

It does not stop because someone reaches some magic age.

And when an autistic adult does not respond the way police expect, the risk can become even greater.

Something people do not always think about is that food and eating can also create serious safety concerns for some people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

For some people, food related behaviors are not simply a preference or a matter of manners. They can involve very real safety risks and may be part of how a person responds to hunger, anxiety, impulse, or not fully comprehending that something is unsafe.

That could mean eating spoiled food out of the garbage, putting something in their mouth that is not food, choking, or getting to something dangerous before anyone can stop them.

For some people, being told no when food is right in front of them can trigger a severe meltdown. A meltdown is communication. It is the person showing, in the way they are able to in that moment, that they are overwhelmed and cannot manage what is happening.

Safely getting through that kind of situation takes someone who understands the person, recognizes what they are communicating, and knows how to de-escalate without making things worse. The immediate priority becomes helping the person regain a sense of safety while keeping everyone involved safe.

In a workplace where other people bring food or leave it sitting out, this can become a very real and constant concern.

That does not mean the person is bad or does not belong in the community.

It means they need support built around how they actually experience the world.

Some people just need the world around them to understand them a little better and keep them safe while they live in it.

08/10/2026

While going back through HB 2080 and what happened afterward, I found something that raised more questions for me.

HB 2080 would have established day habilitation services for people with developmental disabilities in Washington. Remember the bill did not move forward.

Later that year, the Legislature directed DDA through the state budget to convene a workgroup to study day habilitation and make recommendations. I participated in one of those workshops, and I was later quoted in DDA’s October 2024 Day Habilitation Report.

If you read my comments in that report, they probably seem pretty impersonal.

At the time, I didn’t think I would have to keep explaining over and over why families needed another option. I thought Washington understood that some adults with developmental disabilities need an adult day program.

To me, the next step was figuring out what a good program should look like, how it should be structured, and how we could make sure people had some actual choices.

DDA completed that work and published its Day Habilitation Report in October 2024.

During that same period, DDA also created a new Community Collaborations Program Manager position.

The original job posting described it as a temporary statewide position funded through June 2025. The person was supposed to hear from people receiving DDA services, self advocates, families, providers and others. But this wasn’t just a general outreach job. The posting specifically said the person would help DDA look at increasing day services based on what people needed and work through what people actually wanted those services to look like.

The position was ultimately given to someone with established connections to supported employment.

And that matters when you look at what this job was actually supposed to do.

For a job that was supposed to hear from all sides of the developmental disability community, I don’t think the person doing that work should have already been closely connected to one side of the issue. Families needed to feel like they could come into those conversations and actually be heard.

Were people with the highest support needs represented, including people who may not be able to participate in traditional meetings or advocacy groups?

I live in a rural part of Washington, so technically a rural family was represented. But in the workshop I attended, I was the only person in the room who was not there in some kind of professional or service provider role.

I also hear this a lot: sometimes the parents who are invited into these conversations also work in the system themselves. I’m not talking about parents who are paid caregivers for their own family member. I mean parents who also work as providers of employment services, Community Inclusion, other waiver services, and policy makers.

Their voices absolutely matter, but they are coming into the conversation with a different perspective than a parent who is simply trying to navigate the system and find services for their own family.

If DDA wants to know what families need, they also need to hear from parents and guardians who are not working inside the system.

Were people whose experience with Supported Employment or Community Inclusion had not been successful included?

And what did DDA learn from all of those conversations?

So there are still some pretty basic things I would like to know:

• What information was collected during that first year

• Any service gaps that were identified

• Any recommendations that came out of the work

• Whether anything changed because of what people told DDA

• Where the public can see the results

I’m a Washington taxpayer. If public money paid for this work, I don’t think it is asking too much for the public to be able to see what came out of it. Especially when the information is about services people rely on, not national security secrets.

08/07/2026

At fourteen, it was nothing for me to read four or five books over a weekend. I was a regular at the library, and weekends in Seattle often included a trip to a bookstore.

I did my assigned reading for English, and I did my history homework. Beyond that, I mostly read whatever I wanted. My favorite assigned book was The Giver, which I still love.

In eighth grade, I took Comparative World Cultures with Mrs. Miller.

We watched Kundun in class. It is an excellent movie, by the way. It tells the story of the Dalai Lama’s childhood, his rise as Tibet’s spiritual leader, and China’s takeover of Tibet, which eventually forced him into exile.

I became completely fascinated by Tibet, the Dalai Lama, and Buddhism. By fascinated, I mean I immediately decided I was going to free Tibet.

I started checking the tags on everything. If something was made in China, I did not want it. I even started giving away clothes I already owned.

My mom supported my newfound commitment to freeing Tibet, but she did have limits. She told me my personal grudge against the Chinese government did not mean we were going shopping to replace every piece of clothing I gave away.

Honestly, that was fair.

One weekend, my dad and I went to Seattle and stopped at a bookstore on The Ave, which was something we often did. I went straight to anything I could find about Tibet and Buddhism.

I also drove him completely nuts that weekend because I was checking the tag on absolutely everything before I would let him buy it.

I decided his TV had to go because it had been made in China. He was not nearly as committed to my boycott as I thought he should be.

At one point, I wanted to bring a massive book about Buddhist teachings to my very Catholic grandmother’s house. My dad drew the line there too.

Looking back, my understanding of international politics was not especially advanced. I believed people could simply stop buying things made in China, cut off the money, and the problem would be solved.

Apparently, I had not yet accounted for global trade, diplomacy, military power, or the fact that most people might not be willing to part their wardrobe.

When I still run into Mrs. Miller, she tells me I was one of her best students. That was not something I normally heard from teachers, but I understand why she remembers me that way.

In her class, I was completely locked in.

We had also learned about the revolt at Sobibor, a N**i death camp where Jewish prisoners rose up in 1943 and hundreds escaped. When I heard that a man named Toivi, who had escaped Sobibor was coming to speak at Big Bend, our local community college, I told my mom I wanted to go.

She came with me, and I was apparently the only teenager in the area who thought this was where I needed to be that evening. I’m pretty sure I was the only one under the age of forty.

Mrs. Miller showed me parts of the world I had never understood before. And as I learned about people whose lives had very little in common with mine, I still saw their humanity.

Once I saw an injustice, I could not stop thinking about it. I needed to understand how it happened, who had the power to change it, and why they were not doing more.

I may be older now. I understand that changing a system is much more complicated than checking the tag on a shirt.

I have better research now. I understand policy, funding, and the way decisions made decades ago can still control people’s lives today.

But that fourteen year old girl is still very much here.

She still believes injustice should make us uncomfortable.

She still believes people in power should be questioned.

And she still believes that just because a system has existed for a long time does not mean we have to accept it.

The biggest difference is that this time, I have found other people who believe the fight matters too.

Enjoy your weekend, folks. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, and I am very glad you’re here with me.

“Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what's theirs
Don't you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run
Run, run, run, run, run, run
Oh, I said you better run, run, run, run, run, run
Run, run, run, run, run, run
Don't you know
Talking about a revolution?
It sounds like a whisper
And finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' 'bout a revolution
Yes, finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' 'bout a revolution,”

Talkin’ Bout a Revolution
Tracy Chapman

08/06/2026

When Miles was 9, I decided I was going to teach him to ride a bike without the extra wheels he used for support. They looked like what most people would call training wheels, but for Miles they were what made riding possible.

We spent most of that summer working on it. I would raise the extra support wheels a little, he would fall, I would lower them, and then we would try again.

I believed he could learn. I also knew that falling down was part of learning to ride a bike.

Then he had one really hard fall, and it hit me that he could have been seriously hurt.

Of course I did not want my child to suffer, but an injury is also more complicated for Miles than it might be for another child.

There are really only two doctors he completely trusts, Kris Kehler and Eric Aronsohn. They can give him shots, take his blood pressure, look in his ears, and examine him without a problem.

With anyone else, it honestly depends on their vibe. Sometimes Miles will let a doctor or nurse touch him, and sometimes he absolutely will not.

A bad fall could have meant an emergency room, unfamiliar doctors, tests he did not understand, and people trying to treat him while he was scared and in pain.

And for what?

Miles was already riding his bike with the extra wheels for support. He was getting outside. He was moving his body. He was living his best life.

Those extra wheels were not preventing him from riding. They were what allowed him to ride safely.

People talk a lot about the dignity of risk, and I understand why. People with disabilities should be allowed to try things. They should not be denied opportunities simply because someone is afraid they might fail or get hurt.

But the same approach will not work for every person.

People have different strengths, different needs, and different ways of showing us what works for them. Decisions about risk and support should be based on the actual person, not on one narrow idea of independence.

For Miles, the extra support wheels did not take away his freedom. They gave him a safe way to do something he enjoyed.

There comes a point when the answer is not to keep pushing the same option harder. The answer is to recognize that people need different paths.

That is how I feel about employment and day programs. Employment can be the right choice for one person, while a day program may be the right choice for another. Neither person should have to prove that every other option failed before receiving the support that fits them.

In school, an IEP stands for Individualized Education Program. The entire point is that each student receives the supports they need to succeed.

We spend years building an education plan around the individual student. Then they graduate, and we expect every adult to fit into the same limited choices. Why?

The original goal was two wheels. But once it became clear that was not safe for Miles, I had to ask what we were really trying to accomplish. With extra wheels for support, he could still ride, have fun, and enjoy himself. I was not going to spend years chasing one version of success when he already had a safe way to do something he loved.

A job should not be the only measure of a successful adult life. Sometimes the right support gives a person everything that matters, even when it does not look like the outcome the system originally had in mind.

Choosing the support that actually works is not lowering expectations.

08/05/2026

We know serious problems have happened in some adult day programs, and those concerns should never be ignored.

But serious harm happens in workplaces too.

We are not talking about something that might happen. Between 2018 and 2021, the EEOC received more than 98,000 harassment complaints, including over 27,000 involving sexual harassment.

The EEOC does not publish a separate total for workers with intellectual disabilities, but it has brought cases involving them. In one, the agency said a Walmart employee with an intellectual disability was sexually harassed for years, management knew, and she was fired after reporting it.

In another, 31 men with intellectual disabilities were subjected to years of verbal and physical abuse, paid just $65 a month for full time work and forced to live in deplorable conditions.

That does not mean every workplace is unsafe.

It means employment is not automatically free from bullying, sexual harassment, exploitation or abuse simply because it happens in a workplace instead of an adult day program.

And employment is not necessarily providing people with a full day or even a full week in their community.

Nationally, only 17 percent of the adults with intellectual disabilities surveyed had a paid job in the community. And even for those who were working, it usually amounted to only about 12 to 15 hours a week.

For people with high support needs in Washington, the picture was even worse. Forty four percent were not working at all. Those who did have jobs averaged just 21 hours a month, which is less than five hours a week.

The numbers come from different years and measure slightly different groups, but they tell the same story: having a job does not necessarily mean having enough hours to fill a day, much less a week.

And many of the same problems used to argue against adult day programs, including bullying, exploitation, abuse and inadequate support, are already happening in employment settings.

Simply putting someone in a workplace does not automatically make them safe. Safety comes from strong protections, the right support and people paying attention when something goes wrong.

The jobs were pretty limited too. According to the National Core Indicators survey, about 23 percent were in food service, 23 percent were in cleaning or grounds maintenance, and 22 percent were in retail. Only about 5 percent were office jobs, and just 1 percent were professional or technical jobs.

And then there are the challenges the numbers do not show.

What if you need personal care during the day, but no one is available to provide it while you are working?

What if fine motor challenges make tasks take longer, your job coach has explained the accommodations you need, but your employer still will not offer you more hours?

You may technically have a job, but you still spend most of your week at home instead of being part of your community.

What if a coworker bullies you because your vocal stims irritate them, but even though you know what you need to say, your mouth will not form the words you need to explain what is happening?

What if your disability makes it difficult to report mistreatment, ask for help or understand a disciplinary process?

We do not use those risks to argue that supported employment should no longer exist.

We know that workplaces need accommodations, trained support, oversight and protections.

And there is another fear many parents carry that people do not always want us to say out loud.

The numbers behind that fear are frightening. A 2021 review of 25 studies found that nearly one in three adults with intellectual disabilities may have experienced sexual abuse during adulthood. Department of Justice data also found that people with cognitive disabilities had the highest rate of violent victimization of any disability group it measured, and only 19 percent of rapes or sexual assaults against people with disabilities were reported to police.

The studies looked at different groups and measured different things, but the message is the same: the risk is real. And for some people, recognizing grooming, understanding what happened or clearly reporting who hurt them may be difficult.

So when you see a parent like me keeping their adult child close, please understand that it is not because we do not want them to be independent.

It is because we know the statistics.

We know the risks are real. We know some of our children may not be able to tell us clearly if someone hurts them.

That fear does not disappear when they turn 18, graduate or someone tells us it is time to let go.

It never fully leaves.

So forgive us for being scared. We are trying to make room for independence while carrying the knowledge that the world is not always safe for the people we love most.

That fear does not come from believing our children are incapable or that they should be hidden away.

I have spent years watching people stare at Miles in public.

When Miles vocally stims, he makes certain sounds.

I remember being at a party when an adult I barely knew started copying those sounds. I can only guess why, but honestly, what was the point?

I understand that vocal stimming can be loud.

But that man’s instinct was to mock a child.

A child who was simply trying to cope with his surroundings in the only way he knew how.

The answer cannot be to keep people with intellectual and developmental disabilities at home forever.

But the data is telling parents like me that our fears are not irrational. The risks are real.

That is why families need more than reassurance. We need safeguards strong enough to make participation possible and services flexible enough to meet very different needs.

Employment can and should be part of that system.

It should not be expected to carry the entire weight of it.

08/04/2026

So Miles isn’t the only person with autism I love. In fact, there’s this girl named Remi.

I remember the day she was born. I rushed home to shower and change so I could go meet her and her brother. I met her mom, Darby, when I was 14. There is a certain kind of love you have for a child when you have spent more than half your life going through everything with their mother. We spent our teenage years, our 20s, our 30s, and now our 40s together.

I remember looking at both babies and thinking they were just beautiful, especially Remi. She weighed around five pounds and was so tiny. I soaked up every moment with that newborn baby. Even now, Remi loves hearing stories about when she was a baby.

As Remi grew, it became clear that some things were different for her, and eventually she received an autism diagnosis. Autism can sometimes present different in girls than it does in boys.

You may have heard the idea that children with autism do not have imaginations. That is definitely not true, especially in Remi’s case. She loved Little Red Riding Hood, so one day she became Little Red Riding Hood, grabbed her basket, and walked out the front door because she was going to her grandmother’s house, which happened to be across town.

Remi started reading when she was three. I remember as clearly as day watching her read the words “chicken nuggets” on a McDonald’s bag. It was almost hard to believe.

She still loves to read, and she and I enjoy many of the same things, mostly history and stories about real people.

Remi once got ahold of an actual Bible, not a children’s Bible, and apparently found some career inspiration. She came up to her aunt and me and announced that she wanted to become a false prophet and start a false religion.

I have a hundred stories like that, and someday I’ll tell them to her just like I tell her stories about when she was a baby.

Remi can also be blunt, to put it nicely. One time, she told me my stomach and face weren’t so fat anymore. Had anyone else said that, my feelings probably would have been hurt. But coming from Remi, it was the best compliment.

Remi is also aware that she does not always come across the way other people do. Most of the time she calls me Angie, but occasionally, when she is trying to be especially sweet to me, she calls me Ang, just like her mom has all these years.

Remi has learned a lot by watching and modeling other people’s behavior. This is not the first time I have seen her do it. For a while, she would parallel play beside my daughters who were around her age. I watched her watch them, and then, slowly, she stopped playing next to them and began playing with them.

Remi is so amazing , and I truly believe she can go to college and get a job. But I also understand why her mom worries.

When you have a child with an intellectual disability, you prepare for every possible scenario, just in case. If Remi cannot find or maintain a job, what will she do during the day?

She likes being around people, but sometimes being around neurotypical people can wear her out. I can see a difference between the way she interacts with my neurotypical children and the way she interacts with Miles.

With Miles, she can stim and does not have to worry as much about masking. My daughters have never thought anything of stimming or autism because it has been part of their lives since they were born. But that does not mean Remi never feels pressure to conform.

If employment works for Remi, I hope she receives every support she needs to succeed. But if it does not, she should still have somewhere to go during the day. She should have a place where she can be around people she connects with, be herself, and belong.

Happy 11th birthday to Remi! My favorite person to talk about 19th century immigration patterns with.

A place to belong in Washington.

08/12/2026

08/11/2026

08/10/2026

08/07/2026

08/06/2026

08/05/2026

08/04/2026

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