Funding autism services: the Census counts!
by Beth
My husband has been working for the U.S. Census Bureau since January. He doesn’t go door-to-door (not yet, anyway) — he works as a recruiting clerk. Five days a week he heads to our local census office to grade the tests people take when applying for a Census job, keys in information, files forms and answers the phone when applicants call with questions. These days when we sit around at home talking about work, the conversation centers around autism, blogging, and … counting!
I figured ours must be the only “Easter Seals and U. S. Census Bureau” marriage. But then, just this week, I found out that Easter Seals has partnered with the U.S. Census Bureau to spread the word about the 2010 Census.
Census data is used to distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds to state and local governments each year, to apportion congressional seats to states and to make important decisions about what community services to provide. The 2010 Census questionnaire is only 10 questions long and should take about 10 minutes to fill out. An accurate count of people with autism and other disabilities is very important because the census count is used to distribute federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid, SSI, Rehabilitation Act, special education and many other grants and programs.
Most census questionnaires are mailed or hand-delivered during March and due to be returned by April 2010. Census workers will go door-to-door to visit households that did not return their forms from April through July 2010.
Completing the 2010 Census questionnaire is simple and safe. For more information, link to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Web site.