Every April for the past few years, hundreds of Caring Force Members have filled the Great Hall in the State House and advocated for fair funding for human service programs, adequate salaries for low-paid direct care workers and more.
This year, however, the spread of COVID-19 in Massachusetts has caused us to make the difficult decision to change from a physical rally to a “virtual” rally. At this point, it would not be responsible on our part to bring over 500 people into the Great Hall given the risk of infecting our workforce or the clients and consumers who receive critical care from our sector.
Nevertheless, we will still plan to advocate for student loan repayment and fair pay for comparable work in April. Instead, we plan to promote our legislative agenda through a virtual rally!
Human services workers, clients and families will be given opportunities to email and call their representatives, and we plan to make the incredible stories of our speakers available through email spotlights. Further, we will still plan to honor two legislative champions with the Caring Bear Award – we’ll have more on that in the near future.
Despite the change, we view this as an opportunity. Normally, our rally engages only 500 of our nearly 28,000 strong membership, as we have limited capacity at the State House. But now that our rally is a digital one, we have the opportunity to invite thousands of members in our efforts.
Over the next couple weeks, we will send updates and provide greater specificity on our plan for the rally. We still have big goals and plenty of excitement around our student loan repayment initiative and our fair pay for comparable work plan. Please plan to join us digitally in April for a series of events that we hope you’ll agree are still powerful on Beacon Hill.
P.S. The Providers’ Council continues to monitor the Coronavirus on our website and make resources available to members. Please check our resource page for the latest information.
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