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Taking Care of the Caregivers: A Priority for State Legislator

An Interview with Catherine Strode

Taking Care of the Caregivers: A Priority for State Legislator
During the 2014 legislative session, State Representative Lois Landgraf (House District 21) co-sponsored a bill to support the development of a strategic state plan to eliminate the waiting list for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities by 2020. In the upcoming legislative session, she is considering running a bill to move up that deadline because she thinks it’s too far out.


Health Care Advocacy Program Policy Perspective
Taking Care of the Caregivers: A Priority for State Legislator
During the 2014 legislative session, State Representative Lois Landgraf (House District 21) co-sponsored a bill to support the development of a strategic state plan to eliminate the waiting list for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities by 2020. In the upcoming legislative session, she is considering running a bill to move up that deadline because she thinks it’s too far out.
As the mother of a son with a brain injury, Representative Landgraf understands intimately the challenges faced by people with disabilities, and, their caretakers. In an interview with Catherine Strode, Health Care Advocacy Program Consultant, she offered her perspective on how she believes she can impact this area of policy for families.
How did you come to co-sponsor HB14-1051, the bill eliminating the waiting list for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities?
“Representative Stephens, Representative Murray and I wanted to add a footnote to the budget that said there would be no expansion of Medicaid until we took care of the people on the waiting list. My thought was why not pay the bills we have before we make commitments to other people. Representative Schafer joined in our discussion and I asked her if she wanted to work with me and she said absolutely. We came up with our bill and it passed early on. It requires the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to come up with a strategic plan by November of 2014 to get rid of the waiting list by 2020. It also requires all of the community centered boards to give an accurate accounting of who is on the wait list and what services they’re waiting for. The comment I heard is, ‘There’s no point giving a wheelchair to someone who needs a cane.’ What happens currently is your name comes to the top of the list and the people aren’t ready for services. They don’t want to move into a different facility. Maybe they were a child when they got on the list, now they’re 15, and their parents don’t want them to leave home. They’re doing just fine where they are. So they come to the top of the list not wanting those services and yet we count them as being on the waiting list. What we need to know is: how many people need services now and what kind of services do they need, how many people are going to need services within a five year period of time, and how many people are on this list with no intention of using services for five or ten years.”
How do you think you can you impact other areas of policy affecting people with disabilities?
“Those issues are very dear to me. I’m the one there (at the Capitol) who knows that lifestyle and the impact that it has on families more than anybody because we live it every day. We do a lot for our community of people with disabilities but there’s not enough you could ever do. But we forget about the caregivers, the parents who are caregivers. We forget about the need for respite care. We think about taking care of the person who has a disability and we don’t think enough about the people around them; and we need to do that. I think continuing conversations to see what’s needed, what we can do, just like the wait list. If we hadn’t been talking about the need to take care of that wait list and not expand Medicaid until we fix the wait list, we wouldn’t have done this bill.”
What bills are you most proud of sponsoring in the 2014 legislative session?
“I have three bills that I’m equally proud of. One is the wait list for individuals with developmental disabilities, one is my bill that protects victims of sexual assault. Now women who are sexually assaulted and have a child can be protected from their rapist, without there being a conviction. All they want is to protect their kids and to be able to go to court and sever that parental right. When the bill was signed into law, some of the victims were there. To hear these victims give testimony was heart-wrenching. Some of their children were eight or nine years old, so it had been a long time since they suffered their assault but it was as if it happened yesterday. The third one is the bill that makes designer drugs, “spice,” a deceptive practice and sets a fine of ten thousand dollars per packet. I’m very proud of that. I’m happy with my bills. I don’t think I ran anything that was frivolous. Bills that protect victims, bills that protect people with disabilities, and bills that protect people against drugs, I think, are pretty serious bills.”
You serve on both health care committees – what movements do you see in the health care reform arena that you can get behind?
“There’s a big movement to improve mental health services and I can definitely get behind that. I believe taking a gun away from someone is not going to stop gun violence because people who commit gun violence don’t go to a gun shop and go through the waiting period. The problem is mental health. We need to look at mental health and if there is somebody we feel is a danger to themselves, or others. We had a Civil Commitment bill that took the word ‘imminent’ out of ‘imminent danger’ and it got a lot of negative feedback. The way they define ‘imminent danger’ is if you aren’t sitting there with a gun to your head – it’s not imminent. If you tell somebody you’re going to go home and kill yourself, it’s not imminent because you’re not doing it right then. We heard opposition that it was taking away peoples’ civil rights. I was asked why would I vote for that and my comment was you can’t just complain about things. You have to come up with a solution and to me this was a step in the right direction. I think mental health is a huge thing and I think Republicans need to get behind it and maybe go out on a limb and make decisions that may not be politically expedient.”
Catherine StrodeCatherine Strode is the Consultant to the Health Care Advocacy Program. She holds a Masters degree in Public Administration with an emphasis in Health Care Policy. Formerly the Coordinator of the Program, Catherine publishes the HCAP newsletter featuring interviews with state legislators and represents the Program at meetings and events which pertain to policy matters.