By Michele Mashburn, Disability Advocate, Educator, & Activist and Director of SJPJC
People with disabilities, seniors, parents of children with disabilities, service providers, teachers, families with limited English proficiency, and those with limited access to transportation are invited to take this survey.
This survey is a grassroots tool to collect experiences of members of the Access and Functional Needs Community on the COVID-19 response in Santa Clara County. It is open to people who live and work in Santa Clara County. I was assisted by a small group of advocates and activists around All Things Disability in creating this survey instrument to try to measure the overall feelings around the response from the City of San Jose and Santa Clara County during this extended pandemic crisis.
Disasters have a disproportionate impact on people with disabilities. The term Access and Functional Needs was created to allow emergency response systems to create a Whole Community approach. This approach hopefully creates a preparedness, response, and recovery that does not leave people out of the solutions. Individuals with access and functional needs may include people with disabilities, children, older adults, persons with limited English proficiency, and persons with limited access to transportation.
If you have any questions, please reach out to Michele Mashburn at michele@sanjosepeace.org. If you know people who cannot fill out the survey due to language or other barriers, please let me know and I will do what I can to facilitate the process.