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Debbie Shaffer, left, speaks about her experience with the Connecticut Home Care Program for Elders with the assistance of Ruth Grobe, on November 12, 2026 in Hartford.
Debbie Shaffer, left, speaks about her experience with the Connecticut Home Care Program for Elders with the assistance of Ruth Grobe, on November 12, 2026 in Hartford. Credit: Laura Tillman / CT Mirror

Disability rights advocates gathered Thursday to call on the Lamont administration to safeguard funding for programs serving people with disabilities, including a critical one that makes it possible for people to receive care of their choosing in their own homes, known as Community First Choice.

Advocates are concerned funding cuts Medicaid Home and Community Based Services programs could make it into in Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget next year, after a proposal during the 2026 legislative session threatened to end CFC. That proposal was ultimately abandoned, but it sent shockwaves through the disability rights community.

Walter Glomb, Executive Director of the Connecticut State Council on Developmental Disabilities, said Thursday’s gathering was organized to send a message to Lamont not to mess with disability services.

“Last year we were blindsided by the cuts to CFC which is not a small thing,” Glomb said.

“I guess we got spooked,” he said.” But then the you know the thought was, ‘OK, what’s next?'” Amid surging Medicaid costs and dramatically shrinking federal aid, reducing spending on programs like CFC could be on the table, he said.

Community First Choice provides those who qualify with autonomy in choosing their own care. Earlier this year, Lamont proposed transitioning people who were using that program to home- and community-based “waiver” programs that are not as flexible and often have long waiting lists.

The move was met with disbelief and protest by those who had been using the program successfully and saw it as a bright spot in an often dismal landscape for those seeking needed support and autonomy. Lorra Jorden, a mother of a child who was using CFC, said at the time that “for the governor to even propose cutting this program is just unbelievably cruel.”

[RELATED: ‘Unbelievably cruel’: Advocates decry threat to home care program]

At Thursday’s event, more than a dozen disability, aging, mental health and civil rights organizations, as well as self-advocates, joined together to urge the governor to support all Medicaid Home and Community Based Services programs, not just CFC.

Several spoke movingly about the impact the programs had on their lives and their autonomy, like Debbie Shaffer, whose thoughts were shared with the assistance of Ruth Grobe, who read from a prepared statement. “Because people with severe disabilities deserve to live with dignity and freedom of choice, with more support, I enrolled in the [Connecticut Home Care Program for Elders] and started to work with an agency to find caregivers,” Shaffer’s statement read.

Shaffer, who uses a wheelchair and has a speech impairment and limited motor skills, added, “At first, I had a hard time because when they tried to match me up with a lot of caregivers, it didn’t work because of my speech. But the agency didn’t give up, and they found a perfect caregiver who has been with me for three years, and I love her.”

Ryan Loosemore, a self-advocate who spoke about CFC, said he broke his neck at age 16 and became quadriplegic.

“I’ve now been receiving these services for 20 years, and I can tell you firsthand that they changed my life,” he said. “They didn’t just provide me with personal care, assistance. It gave me the opportunity to live independently, work, go to school, build relationships, and become part of my community again. I once felt like the world had forgotten about me. These services gave me my world back.”

Ryan Loosemore, a self-advocate for the Community First Choice program, speaks at a press conference in support of programming for those with disabilities in Connecticut on November 12, 2026 in Hartford.
Ryan Loosemore, a self-advocate for the Community First Choice program, speaks at a press conference in support of programming for those with disabilities in Connecticut on November 12, 2026 in Hartford. Credit: Laura Tillman / CT Mirror

The Lamont administration won’t release the governor’s proposed budget until early next year. But for advocates like Loosemore, the programs are just too important to wait and see.

He called on lawmakers to look beyond the numbers in the budget and ask what the true cost would be of taking the programs away. “Please protect Community First Choice. Protect home and community-based services to make sure future generations of people with disabilities have the same opportunities,” he said.

“We’re not asking for special treatment. We’re asking for the opportunities to live, contribute, and belong. These services didn’t just help me survive with a disability; it gave you the opportunity to actually live my life.”

Laura Tillman is CT Mirror’s Human Services Reporter. She shares responsibility for covering housing, child protection, mental health and addiction, developmental disabilities, and other vulnerable populations. Laura began her career in journalism at the Brownsville Herald in 2007, covering the U.S.–Mexico border, and worked as a statehouse reporter for the Associated Press in Mississippi. She was most recently a producer of the national security podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen” and is the author of two nonfiction books: The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts (2016) and The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia (2023), which was just awarded the 2024 James Beard Award for literary writing. Her freelance work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Laura holds a degree in International Studies from Vassar College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Goucher College.