Healthcare policy seems so abstract: “50% of children rely on Medicaid.” So many children, most of them perfectly healthy. Surely there’s some room to give?
But if you cut Medicaid, this particular child will die.
Even if it’s a small cut.
Even if it’s a “targeted” cut.
Because those cuts always start where this child lives: on the margins. The first cut is always to home care (waiver programs), the very things that keep medically complex kids alive, safe, and at home with their loving families.
Could you look this child in the eye, talk with him, meet his family, and then vote to (at best) rip him from his home and ship him off to an institution where it’s “cheaper”?
Could you tell him, “Sorry, kid, your life simply isn’t in the budget”?
Of course you couldn’t.
That’s why Little Lobbyists devotes our expertise to bringing our medically complex children to the Hill, to confront electeds in person with the very first kids their votes will harm or protect.
Because our children, by nature of the care they rely on, are a living, breathing line in the sand.
If they cut the programs our medically complex children need, they will harm our kids first… but they won't stop there.
When we stop them from making that first cut, all children benefit.
We make decisionmakers look our kids in the eye before they vote.
We roll in with our kids, in their strollers and wheelchairs, toting oxygen tanks and pumps, with their little smiles and big eyes.
We make sure they see us and talk with us, hear our stories, look us in the eye and face the full impact of their votes:
Here is a little girl. She loves My Little Pony and dinosaurs. She will die without the treatments and equipment she needs.
Here is a little boy. He loves Bluey and his little sister. He will be ripped from his loving family and institutionalized among strangers.
Healthcare policy is abstract, but there's nothing more real than a child looking up at you, waiting on your answer.
Little Lobbyists is experienced and effective at changing hearts, minds, and votes.
We are a national organization with representative families from every district, and we have been doing this work since 2017.
We undertake the difficult project of bringing families from around the country to the Hill, with their disabled and medically complex children, to be advocates for themselves, and all disabled children — and, by extension, due to the way policy budgeting works, all children, period — because it works.
We don't just show up and hope for the best — we prepare for success:
- We do our own healthcare policy analysis.
- We pick families and kids who will be persuasive.
- We train and prep those families so they can confidently and effectively navigate the conversations they'll have on the Hill.
- We engage with leg staff at all levels, comms, press secretaries, and the press corps.
- We create photo opportunities — everybody loves a human interest story, especially when it's a cute kid.
- We attend and host vigils and other high-profile events.
- We bring professionally designed leave-behinds.
And our families don't just visit their own electeds, they make the most of every visit.
We also arrange travel for each child and their family, accessible transport and lodging, and other necessities like food, supplies. It's more difficult to travel with a disability, so we do the heavy lifting so our families can focus on the work they've come to do.
Our work is high impact and cost-effective.