Hi Caregivers and Supporters:

The petition has held at 758 signatures for three weeks.

Everyone who signed did their part. The ask this week is different - and it is urgent.

The Colorado session closed three days ago. The summer interim is open. The CARE Act coalition work begins now. Every name we add to this petition before I walk into those legislative conversations strengthens the case. Please share this petition today with one person on the continuum.

 
Every night, Rose asks me for help with her shoes.

She has end-stage progressive dementia. She has lived with us since 2016 - six years in our Brighton home. She cannot always remember what day it is. But she knows what she needs, and she knows who to ask.

My wife carries the days. I carry the nights - shoes off, teeth brushed, PJs on, into bed. The last human contact of her day before sleep. The law sees neither of us.

Can you help me?

Three words. The whole argument. The whole series.

 
This week I want to tell you about what I've been calling the Universal Care Continuum - and why it connects directly to the bill I am building.

Every human being moves along this continuum. We begin by receiving care entirely and completely. We grow into a period of giving and receiving in shifting ratios. We encounter the caregiving years - for parents, for partners, for friends. And we move toward needing care again.

Every person reading this is somewhere on that continuum right now.

The question is not whether caregiving will be part of your life. It will be. By 2034, there will be more seniors in America than children. 63 million Americans are family caregivers now - nearly one in four adults. The caregiving wave is not coming. It is here.

And it is landing on a generation that has never been taught how to answer the question.

73% of Gen Z struggles with loneliness despite being hyper-connected. 72% of caregivers under 32 report loneliness = the highest of any caregiving cohort. The youngest people doing the most intimate relational work of their lives are doing it most alone. Because the culture that devalued caregiving as invisible also eroded the social infrastructure that transmitted caregiving skills across generations. The loneliness epidemic and the caregiving crisis are the same structural failure.

 
The Colorado CARE Act is the legal architecture the Universal Care Continuum requires.

It does not teach social skills. It does not fix loneliness. It does not replace the relational work that caregiving demands.

What it does is protect the people who do that work - who answer "can you help me?" night after night, who sustain the presence and expertise and love that the economy depends on and the law does not yet see.

Zero general fund. $23-38 million in projected net annual savings. The class already named by the 2021 POWR Act. The architecture - interactive process, Employment Detachment Event definition, enforcement teeth - still to be built.

Senator Mullica. Representative Taggart. The summer interim conversations begin this week. Every name on this petition is evidence I bring into those rooms.

 
Please share this petition today. One person on the continuum. That is the ask.

Read this week's full piece - "Can You Help Me?": [https://open.substack.com/pub/therevenueneutralcaregiver/p/our-lives-on-hold-7cb?r=6a52ih&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true]

Sign or share here: https://c.org/WjGpN6TYnB

758 signatures. 242 from 1,000. The summer interim is open.

Can you help me?

The law should be built to answer yes.

Kindly and Gratefully,

- Mark Fukae Director of Advocacy, Professionals Who Care Founder, CASI - Caregiver Advocacy Support Initiative mark_fukae@casiadvocacy.org | casiadvocacy.org