Disability Rights Ohio - Goals and Objectives

Goals and Objectives for Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2025

OCTOBER 1, 2024, TO SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

Disability Rights Ohio is a nonprofit organization that advocates for an equitable Ohio for people with disabilities. Our work is led and informed by a Board of Directors comprised primarily of people with disabilities and others with lived experiences. Every year, we collect information from Ohioans with disabilities, their family members, and other stakeholders. Through more than 570 surveys, including more than 400 from people living in facility settings, and input from our PAIMI Advisory Council, our goals and objectives have been informed by the lived experiences of advocates statewide and approved by our Board of Directors.

To achieve the greatest impact, DRO works strategically to focus our limited resources directly to those who need us most. DRO recognizes that people with disabilities face multiple, complex barriers throughout their lives. To maximize our impact, our work will focus on Ohioans with disabilities who are at heightened risk of harm, discrimination, isolation, or disconnection from essential service systems. This includes people with disabilities who are in institutions or at risk of institutionalization, who are legally dependent on others for decision-making including children, and who face multiple complex barriers to community integration such as poverty, language barriers, regional service deficiencies, and other overlapping factors that impede community inclusion.

Strengthening and expanding access to community supports and services.

Engage in individual advocacy for people with a mental health diagnosis or traumatic brain injury who are in locked behavioral health units within a nursing home and who express a desire to transition to a less restrictive environment or learn more about community supports and services.
Provide individual advocacy to access home and community-based services for youth with complex behavioral health needs, who face multiple barriers to community integration and are at risk of institutionalization or are institutionalized.
Engage with partners and stakeholders to connect youth with complex behavioral health needs, who are either at risk of juvenile detention or transitioning out of juvenile detention facilities, to community supports and services.
Provide individual advocacy for Ohioans with intellectual and developmental disabilities that are experiencing multiple complex barriers becoming eligible for services in the developmental disabilities system.
Engage in systemic advocacy to address communication barriers, including interpreter needs, within the developmental disability service system.
Engage in systemic advocacy for increased home and community-based services and supports for Ohioans with traumatic brain injury who are not eligible for services and supports through the developmental disabilities system.

Supporting disabled people to participate in advocacy and policymaking to address major, systemic issues that directly impact their lives.

Continue advocacy to maintain increased investments in systems that fund home and community-based services, including addressing the direct care workforce crisis and the elimination of 14(c) sub-minimum wage certificates in Ohio, by centering the experiences and perspectives of disabled people.
Support and collaborate with disability-led organizations and groups, like Breaking Silences Advisory Committee, the Ohio Olmstead Task Force, and the centers for independent living.
Educate and inform legislators on policy proposals and issues that impact and protect the rights of people with disabilities.
Engage in coalition building and advocacy for policy initiatives that increase and expand access to voluntary non-coercive mental health services, such as alternative crisis response systems.
Advocate for full accessibility in the state legislative and administrative process.

Increasing positive educational outcomes for students with disabilities.

Develop and disseminate informational materials and conduct trainings on rights and remedies to students with disabilities, parents, and families, including regularly held legal advice clinics to better educate families about their rights and promote self-advocacy.
Engage in systemic and individual advocacy to address inadequate access to programming and individualized educational services (such as school-based mental health services and positive behavioral interventions and supports), the use of seclusion and restraint, the use of discipline (suspensions, expulsions), and the school-to-prison pipeline, particularly for those placed in the most restrictive settings.
Monitor implementation of the DOE settlement agreement and collaborate with community organizations, and provide short-term assistance or individual advocacy, as appropriate, to the students, parents, and families in the eleven DOE school districts to improve outcomes for students with disabilities.
Provide short-term assistance or individual advocacy, as appropriate, on special education issues to the students, parents, and families in the special education fellowship counties to improve outcomes for students with disabilities.
Review the quality of and access to education and transition services provided by psychiatric and other youth residential treatment facilities to improve educational services and work with stakeholders to connect transition-age youth to community supports and services.
Provide short-term assistance or individual advocacy to students who need assistive technology or students and families who have language barriers or communication needs to support their access to programming.
Provide information, referrals, or short-term assistance to students with disabilities and their families to support their self-advocacy.
Engage in policy advocacy with the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, and other stakeholders and advocates to improve Ohio’s special education system.
Provide self-advocacy materials and resources, conduct trainings, and outreach, and engage in individual and systemic advocacy for transition-age youth and their families, to help students access integrated, competitive employment and vocational rehabilitation services.

Promoting equity and increasing positive employment outcomes for people with disabilities to prepare for, enter, or remain in the workplace.

Continue work on the Seneca Re-Ad litigation to ensure the rights of individuals working in non-integrated work environments are protected, including minimum wage and reasonable accommodations necessary to eliminate discrimination.
Provide benefits counseling under the Work Incentives Planning and Assistance program within our northern and western county area in Ohio, using the priorities set by the Social Security Administration (including a focus on transition-age youth and veterans), and referrals from the Ticket to Work helpline and Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities.
To support competitive employment, provide information, referrals, or short-term assistance on employment discrimination issues in which an employer has denied a person reasonable accommodations for their disability.
Support beneficiaries of Social Security and Vocational Rehabilitation participants achieve positive employment outcomes by:

Providing short-term assistance, information, or referrals, for disputes with the Social Security Administration involving work-related overpayments to eliminate barriers in securing, maintaining, or regaining employment.
Advocating for students to access needed accommodations in their post-secondary programs.
Assisting with issues accessing vocational rehabilitation services or independent living services by providing self-advocacy assistance, information, advice, negotiation, and, when appropriate, advocacy within the administrative hearing process.
Educating and training people with disabilities to understand their rights, fully engage in the development of their own individual plan for employment (IPE) and identify their employment goals to empower self-advocacy in the vocational rehabilitation process.
Providing information and referrals to Social Security beneficiaries and vocational rehabilitation participants on disability-related financial tools, such as Medicaid Buy-In and STABLE Accounts, available to people with disabilities to help them achieve financial independence and security.
Advocating for rules, policies, and procedures in Ohio’s vocational rehabilitation system that promote full access to all services needed for people with disabilities to pursue work that is tailored to their needs and strengths.
Developing resources and providing trainings on employment discrimination and accessing vocational rehabilitation services.
Addressing blanket denials by Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities through individual advocacy or litigation where services are denied without individual analysis or because of policies that conflict with federal law.

Protecting people with disabilities in facilities from abuse, neglect, and rights violations.

Conduct monitoring activities in state-licensed or state-operated segregated facilities regarding rights education and protection, environmental conditions, and level of care/treatment standards to advocate for and protect the rights of individuals with disabilities.
Investigate allegations of abuse and neglect and exploitation in a variety of state-licensed or state-operated segregated settings, particularly in instances where there are allegations of suspicious deaths, serious injury resulting in hospitalization, restraint and seclusion that is frequent and reoccurring or for long periods of time, and sexual abuse and human trafficking.
Advocate for necessary communication, including access to the internet, in state regional psychiatric hospitals for individuals with long-term hospital stays.
Engage in systemic advocacy to prevent overreliance on locked behavioral health units in nursing homes for individuals with a mental health diagnosis.
Advocate for the use of psychiatric advanced directives in individualized care planning for individuals in state-licensed or state-operated segregated facilities.
Advocate for access to mental health services to prevent long-term or reoccurring solitary confinement, including extended periods of constant watch, in jails and prisons.
Advocate for effective communication and access to assistive technology for people in prisons or jails to ask for services or raise concerns, to access medical and mental health services, and to talk safely to an attorney and visitors.

Ensuring voters with disabilities have equal access to voting systems and the information and resources they need to enforce their rights.

Provide information and referrals, short-term assistance, and legal advocacy for voting accessibility issues, including operating a voter hotline on Election Day.
Outreach to disabled people in a variety of state-licensed segregated settings, county jails, and community-based settings to provide voting rights information and education.
Engage in policy and legislative advocacy to protect the right to vote for people with disabilities.

Implementing Social Security representative payee review program.

Review at least 161 representative payees in FY 2025, as well as engaging in Quick Reviews and other activities, like assistance in implementing corrective action plans, as needed to implement the representative payee grant.
Conduct outreach to places where Social Security beneficiaries receive services.
Make referrals to outside programs as well as other protection and advocacy programs to address problems identified during reviews, including collaborating with DRO’s abuse and neglect team for referrals of abuse or neglect and conditions issues.

Taking necessary steps to enforce DRO’s statutory access under federal law to facilities, individuals, and their records.

As the protection and advocacy system for Ohio, DRO has federal and state authority to monitor any facility or service provider in the state providing care or treatment to individuals with disabilities, or to investigate incidents of abuse and neglect of individuals with disabilities. DRO will enforce this access authority when necessary to fulfill its role as Ohio’s protection and advocacy system.

Conducting outreach and training to people with disabilities, their families, and advocates, with a focus on those who need us the most.

Conduct outreach to those most in need of training and education on disability services, such as home and community-based waiver programs, and disability rights, including requesting reasonable accommodations.
Develop plain language training and informational resources including webinars, short videos, templates, and FAQs for areas where DRO is unable to provide direct legal assistance.

Assisting people with disabilities to advocate for their rights.

DRO has limited resources and cannot meet all the advocacy needs of people with disabilities and their families across the state. Our goal is to provide individuals with disabilities with the information and tools to advocate for themselves to get the services and supports they need. To maximize our ability to assist people with disabilities to advocate for their rights, DRO will provide short-term assistance such as limited legal advice, information and referrals, outreach and training, or self-advocacy assistance on the following issues:

Housing discrimination including a landlord’s refusal to provide reasonable accommodations (like service animals, emotional support animals, accessible parking) or to allow reasonable modifications (physical modifications to one’s dwelling) that have a significant impact on one’s ability to use and enjoy their home, do daily tasks, have their needs met, or be integrated in their community.
Access to places of public accommodations, (such as businesses and doctor offices) as well as government programs and services (such as courts) with a focus on those who face multiple complex barriers to access.
Access to assistive technology, the lack of which causes a significant and negative impact on access to programs, services, housing, home modifications, transportation, Medicaid denials, or medical care.
Rights within the guardianship process, including denial of legal representation at a probate court hearing, notice of a hearing or the right to attend, or the right to an independent evaluation.
Provide limited legal advice to persons who need assistance requesting or implementing supported decision-making and other less restrictive alternatives to guardianship.
Provide information and referrals on developmental residential services (including home and community-based services, the right to reside and receive ICF services under Medicaid, etc.,) designed to maximize an individual’s potential and provide the least restrictive setting for their personal liberty.

The level of short-term assistance and advice depends on several factors, including:

whether there is legal merit (meaning the facts and law support what the individual wants);
whether the type of issue and the individual’s situation is able to be resolved with short-term assistance; and
whether DRO has the necessary resources (attorney time, funding grant resources, and restrictions of individual grants, etc.).

There are many types of requests for advice and assistance where DRO does not have the staff resources, funding, or expertise to provide any individualized legal advice or assistance. Generally, this will include requests in the following areas, though this is not a complete list:

Eligibility for Social Security disability insurance or Supplemental Security Income benefits.
Veteran benefits.
Victims of crime services.
Other abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation by a service provider or guardian, not covered above.
Parental or custody issues.
Evictions or general landlord-tenant issues, housing conditions.
Housing discrimination where a request for reasonable accommodation has not yet been made, or where only general information on reasonable accommodations is needed.
Complaints about one’s current attorney.
Complaints about medical professionals or other licensed professionals.
Criminal or forensic matters.
Nursing facility discharge notices.
Employment discrimination where the employee has already been terminated.
Other prison or jail issues not covered above, including where a person incarcerated in a prison has concerns about general medical care.
Complaints or questions from people in mental health facilities, including those involving voluntary or involuntary admissions to psychiatric hospitals.
Denials of Waiver services issues, such as number of service hours or denial of specific waiver services.
Post-secondary accommodations except where the individual is a social security beneficiary or working with Vocational Rehabilitation services through Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities (OOD).

DRO has a self-advocacy resource page with informational materials on many issues, including some of the areas listed above.

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