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The United Cerebral Palsy is offering strategies and proven ideas on how to improve Medicaid services for people with disabilities at the local, state and national levels.

UCP has just released The Plan for Inclusion, a menu of policy options and tactics designed to work in tandem with The Case for Inclusion, a recently released UCP report which ranks and analyzes how states are serving Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities under Medicaid. The UCP state ranking data sheds light on areas where your state is underperforming while The Plan for Inclusion offers suggestions for action.

The Plan is intended to help advocates:

• Understand the unique challenges within their state;
• Communicate that information to policy makers, state administrators, the media and key stakeholders;
• Prioritize areas needing attention; and
• Match priority areas with action steps that have proven effective in other states.

Because every state is different and states vary greatly in their success in providing community-based supports to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, there is no one silver bullet. Every state has room for improvement and The Plan for Inclusion can be a resource to advocates as they create or review a work plan for change.

The full text of "The Plan for Inclusion," the full text of "The Case for Inclusion 2007" (UCP's state Medicaid rankings and analysis) and state-by-state data is available.