On June 16, 2020, Governor Brian Kemp announced Chris Wells as the new executive director of the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency (GVRA). The agency has been undergoing re-organization for the past five years, meaning it has been in a state of perpetual change. Before Wells’ arrival,...

These past few months have seen a number of starts and stops in negotiations on a new Congressional COVID-19 relief package, and we expect a busy fall ahead as this Congress wraps up. COVID-19 Response: Congressional Response: Congress passed three COVID-19 relief bills and an interim bill...

Twenty-seven community advocates for inclusion and change from the Real Communities Partnership (RCP) and the Welcoming Communities Dialogues (WCD) groups gathered virtually from August 19 to 21 for their annual retreat. For those three days, the work centered around their response to a movie...

John McCarty, consultant and member of the Uniting for Change Leadership Collective, talks about what voting means to him as a citizen and self-advocate. I’ve always been interested in news. The news about how the government operates and what the government is doing has always fascinated me. I...

When Regina Watts arrived in 2008, Albany Technical College didn’t have an inclusive post-secondary education (IPSE) program. Watts had worked in the disability space for over a decade prior, and she wrote the idea for an inclusive program down on an initial list of goals. “I wanted to create a...

As we move closer to 2021, we can either look at this time with regret and sadness – or as a time of opportunity. Though battling COVID-19 has meant being away from friends and family, new technology allows us to be together even when we are far apart. We at the Georgia Council on Developmental...

The following is the complete interview led by Kate Brady from the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities (GCDD) on employment for people with disabilities with Nick Perry, DeKalb Community Services Board; Melissa Rutland, Diversified Enterprises; and Doug Crandell, Institute on Human...

What We Learned from the Virtual Townhall Listening Sessions To encourage more robust participation, virtual townhalls were scheduled in August to discuss various topics that will inform GCDD’s next Five Year Plan. If you didn’t get a chance to participate in the townhall meetings, you can...

by Pat Nobbie, Mia's Mom Mia got COVID. Those of you who followed Mia’s Space when I worked for GCDD know her. She has no other complicating health conditions except for “morbid obesity,” which is the clinical term for being very overweight. Despite her weight, Mia is active. She works 20...