Hi Team! - The petition has held at 758 signatures for two weeks.
Everyone who signed did their part. Now the ask is different.
If you've already signed: share this petition today. With one person. Someone who is carrying something the law doesn't see. Someone whose employer doesn't know what their mornings cost. Someone who has been told their caregiving situation isn't categorically different from anyone else's.
Sharing costs nothing and takes thirty seconds. The session closes May 13 - eleven days. The summer interim is when the CARE Act moves from coalition to bill language. Every new name on this petition is evidence we bring into that window.
Low lift. High impact. Please share.
Every time I come home from work, Rose asks me the same question.
"Are you here to take me home?"
She has lived with us since 2016 - in this Brighton home since January 2020. But I went back to the office that year - a return-to-office order with no accommodation framework for what I am as a family caregiver. My wife carries the week. What I provided, without understanding it until I stopped, was presence. The predictability of a door opening at a certain time. The anchor.
When I was home, Rose didn't ask.
When I come back from work now, she asks every time.
I've learned what to say: You're having a meal with us tonight. And then you'll sleep here. In my house. Not "you are home" - too abstract to hold. Something near and concrete. And she says: I needed to hear that.
This week, three things happened that explain exactly why this petition exists.
A woman disclosed her disability in a job interview. She followed up three times. She was ghosted. The ADA has been law since 1990 - thirty-six years. "We'll be in touch" followed by silence is legally clean. No paper trail. Nothing to prove. A protection statute without enforcement architecture is a statement of values, not a guarantee of rights.
Elon Musk confirmed publicly that Social Security and Medicare are the administration's "key targets." DOGE cut Social Security's administrative staff by 12%. Administrative costs are less than 1% of Social Security spending. The only way slashing workers saves money is by making it hard for people to access what they've earned. Rose paid 6.2% of every paycheck for forty years. That is a contract. The government renamed it a benefit so it could renegotiate the terms.
And families caring for people with developmental disabilities stood on the Colorado Capitol steps last week asking lawmakers not to cut what little they have left. The budget passed anyway - including the 56-hour caregiver cap.
Here is the policy clarity this petition is built on:
Colorado already has partial caregiver protection. The 2021 POWR Act added caregiver status as a protected class under Colorado law and defined the terms. The class exists in statute.
What POWR did not add - and what the Colorado CARE Act would add - is the accommodation architecture that makes protection real. The interactive process requirement before flexible work is denied. The Employment Detachment Event definition, which codifies the pattern of pressure that ends caregiving careers without a single legally actionable act. The anti-retaliation enforcement framework.
The CARE Act is not creation. It is completion. The class exists. The protection needs to be real.
Eleven days remain in the Colorado legislative session. The summer interim is the window. Every signature - and every share - is evidence we bring into that window.
Please share this petition today. One person. That is all.
Then read this week's full piece - Our Lives On Hold: "I Needed to Hear That":
Sign or share here: https://chng.it/DLWncS9wtT
758 signatures. 242 from 1,000. Session closes May 13.
She paid for the right to hear that. And Colorado can choose to build a state where the people doing this work are named in the law - because it is right, because the data supports it, and because they have earned it. This petition is part of how that gets built.
Kindly and Gratefully,
- Mark Fukae Director of Advocacy, Professionals Who Care Founder, CASI - Caregiver Advocacy Support Initiative mark_fukae@casiadvocacy.org | casiadvocacy.org