Unlock The Waiting Lists

How to join the UnlockTheWaitingLists coalition

UnlockTheWaitingLists supports Georgians with disabilities and their families who are waiting for Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS), Medicaid waiver access and dependable community support. Joining the coalition means helping make those waiting lists visible, sharing lived experience and urging decision-makers to fund services that allow people to live with greater choice and stability.

For Australians, the campaign may feel familiar even though it focuses on Georgia in the United States. Families navigating the NDIS, support coordination, specialist housing or long delays for assessments will recognise the wider issue: services are only meaningful when people can access them when they need them. Your involvement can build an informed international network while keeping the campaign’s practical focus on Georgia.

Understand what the coalition is working towards

Start by learning how Georgia’s HCBS system works and why waiver access matters. Home and Community-Based Services can include personal assistance, respite, supported employment, transportation and other supports that help people remain in their own homes rather than entering institutional care. The campaign also tracks public funding, legislative proposals and decisions affecting families on state waiting lists.

The UnlockTheWaitingLists website is the central place to follow updates, policy information, advocacy priorities and legislative dates. Read the campaign’s Georgia budget analysis to see how budget proposals can affect HCBS availability. Understanding the link between appropriations, waiver slots and provider capacity will help you communicate accurately when sharing campaign information.

An Australian supporter should also keep the systems separate. Georgia’s Medicaid waivers are not the same as Australia’s NDIS, state disability services or My Aged Care. The comparison is useful for recognising common access problems, but coalition messages should remain specific to Georgia’s programmes, agencies and elected representatives.

Sign up and follow reliable updates

Visit the campaign website and look for its coalition, contact and action-alert options. Joining an email list or community network is a practical first step because legislative timetables can change quickly. Updates may include public hearings, budget developments, advocacy days, requests for personal stories and opportunities to contact members of the Georgia General Assembly.

Use a separate email folder for campaign messages and save important dates in your calendar. This is especially helpful if you are participating from Australia, where Georgia meetings and hearings may occur overnight in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth. A small routine—checking updates once a week and recording deadlines—can make overseas participation manageable.

Before reposting an update, check its date and source. Disability policy discussions can involve technical language about waiver categories, eligibility, funding allocations and service rates. Sharing the original campaign page, rather than an incomplete screenshot, gives families and supporters the clearest information.

Share lived experience with care

Personal stories can show what a waiting list means in everyday life. A family might describe missed employment, exhausted carers, delayed independence, unsuitable housing or the cost of paying privately for support. Stories can be shared by disabled people themselves, parents, siblings, advocates or service providers, depending on consent and personal preference.

Keep the person’s control at the centre of the process. Ask before sharing a name, photograph, diagnosis, location or details about a child. Consider using a first name, initials or an anonymous account. A strong advocacy story does not need to reveal every private detail; it needs to explain the gap between a person’s support needs and the services available.

Australian supporters can bring useful perspective without speaking over Georgians. Someone familiar with the NDIS provider market may understand how funding delays affect plan implementation, while a carer in regional New South Wales or Queensland may recognise the strain created by thin local service coverage. Use those experiences as points of connection, then direct attention back to the needs and voices of people in Georgia.

Take part through community and public advocacy

Coalition work can include contacting legislators, attending online briefings, sharing action alerts and encouraging community organisations to discuss disability services. A respectful message to a representative should identify the issue, explain its effect on families and request a clear action, such as supporting increased HCBS funding or additional waiver capacity.

Consistency matters more than a single burst of attention. You might write to a Georgia representative during a budget debate, share an update with a disability organisation, or invite a local online group to learn about the waiting-list campaign. Australians can also contact relevant networks at home, including disability advocacy groups, carers’ organisations and NDIS-focused community forums, when the discussion is clearly framed as international solidarity.

Community campaigns often gain strength from simple, repeatable public communication. A local Australian example from a different policy area, the solar advocacy example, illustrates how practical civic projects can connect public priorities with local decision-making. The lesson for disability advocacy is to explain the issue plainly, show its community impact and make the requested policy change easy to understand.

Build a sustainable role in the coalition

There are several ways to participate, and they do not all require public speaking or specialist policy knowledge. Choose a role that fits your time, skills and connection to disability advocacy. A person who cannot attend a live meeting may still share accurate updates, proofread a statement, donate, connect the campaign with a community group or offer research support.

Useful starting points include:

Keep a record of the actions you take and the responses received. This can help the coalition identify which messages receive attention and which organisations may be willing to collaborate. It also prevents advocacy from becoming an exhausting cycle of reacting to every update.

For Australians, sustainable involvement may mean setting aside one evening each month, joining a webinar when the time zone works, or coordinating with friends through a community centre, disability organisation or informal group. A Sydney carer, a Melbourne disability advocate and a Brisbane-based NDIS professional may have different perspectives, yet each can contribute to a broader conversation about timely, person-led support.

The most useful next step is to visit UnlockTheWaitingLists, subscribe to its updates, read the current HCBS policy information and complete one listed action within the next seven days.