Jenny takes a selfie in one of the California Assembly buildings in Sacramento. She wears her trademark bright pink glasses, as well as a bright pink blazer. Behind her are the ornate columns, gates and tile floors of a legislative building.

Hi! I’m Jenny McLelland and I’m the Director of Policy for Home and Community-Based Services for Little Lobbyists. My family lives in Clovis, a small city in the agricultural Central Valley of California. My husband is a physical education teacher, and I’m a retired police officer. We have two teenage children - Josephine and James.

In my role as Director of Policy for Home and Community Based Services, I get to help turn family stories into solutions. That means I’ve had to learn a lot about Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services waivers. Medicaid HCBS Waivers are the legal framework that pays for children like my son to get nursing care at home. I want to make sure that any child who needs nursing care at home can get it, like my son James.

I got involved with Little Lobbyists because of my 13-year-old son James. He’s a really fun kid. He gets good grades, he plays percussion in the school band, and he loves 3D design and printing. James has a rare genetic disorder that affects his airway and breathing, so he has a tracheostomy (a plastic tube in his neck) to help him breathe and he uses a ventilator at night. 

My biggest priority as an advocate is to make sure medically complex kids have access to nursing care at home. My son spent most of the first year of his life in an institution because we couldn’t get the support we needed to bring him home - I don’t want that to happen to anyone else.

James (l) and Jenny (r) pose in a hospital room at discharge. Jenny is wearing bright pink eyeglasses and has chin-length blonde hair. James is wearing a sage green Pokemon shirt and holds a paper shopping bag and a robot. Behind them are an unmade hospital bed, and a variety of medical equipment and monitors.

There are two equally important sides of advocacy: telling stories that help people understand what life is like for disabled kids, and using those stories to solve problems.  Little Lobbyists does a great job of helping families tell their stories in a way that puts a human face on a complicated policy.

When I first got involved in advocacy in 2016, it was as a storyteller, working to save the Affordable Care Act. James benefited from a provision of the ACA that banned health insurance companies from imposing “lifetime limits” on medical care. Because James spent most of the first year of his life in the hospital and in a nursing home, he exceeded the cost that would have been his lifetime limit when he was only a few weeks old.

As I got more involved, I realized that what I really love is the details. I like reading the details of Medicaid Home and Community Based Services waivers–these are the state programs that give kids access to Medicaid services at home. While the federal government establishes a general set of rules, every state designs its own programs, so figuring out what the rules are for your state can be confusing. I like helping people figure out what’s going on with their own state waivers and figuring out who to contact to fix things.

You can reach out to me at jenny@littlelobbyists.org to talk about:

• How can Medicaid help disabled kids live at home with their families.

• What other programs help disabled children access their full civil rights in the community.

• How Medicaid can help disabled young adults who are aging out of the pediatric care system.

I’m excited to work with the team at Little Lobbyists so that our kids can write their own stories!

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Jenny McLelland is Little Lobbyists’ Policy Director for Home and Community-Based Services.

A boy wearing sunglasses holds a colorful spoon as he rolls an Easter egg down his lane on the White House lawn.

On Monday, April 10, some of our Little Lobbyists families were invited to attend the first-ever disability-friendly Easter Egg Roll! We are grateful to the White House, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, and the White House Office of Public Engagement, especially Senior Advisor Anna Perng (a fellow member of the disability community), for all of the hard work that made this day possible.

In the past, large crowds, loud noises, inaccessible terrain, and few accommodations or adaptive activities made the annual White House Easter Egg Roll – an event that dates back to 1878 – challenging for our families to participate in or fully enjoy. This year First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, whose office plans and hosts the event, wanted to do more to prioritize inclusion, so the White House reached out to partners in the disability community and asked us to share our experiences and suggestions. Little Lobbyists was thrilled for the opportunity to work with the White House Office of Public Engagement to help ensure the success of this first-ever event – inclusion is central to our mission and we love to see our kids have FUN! 

This year, many steps were taken to help kids with disabilities (and their families!) participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll. They included:

• A sensory-friendly session: Each year, the White House welcomes over 30,000 people to the Easter Egg Roll! It is VERY crowded, loud, and busy – which can be too overwhelming for many of our kids. To address this, the White House created a new, earlier session (from 7-9 am) for a smaller number of participants given tickets through a variety of disability-related organizations. Louder musical events were also postponed until later in the day.

• More accessible grounds: The Easter Egg Roll takes place outdoors on the lawn of the White House. It’s a pretty spectacular back yard, but the uneven terrain can be difficult for people with mobility challenges. To make it easier, wheelchair and walker-friendly pathways were put in place throughout the grounds. There were also more accessible bathrooms, including family bathrooms, and places for changing larger kids and adults as needed. 

• Adaptive equipment and activities: There were beeping eggs for those who are blind/low vision, hockey sticks and grab-arm devices to help those with mobility needs reach the eggs, spinning lego robot egg decorators (so cool!), and more.

• Volunteers and helpers: The army of volunteers is always amazing, but this year there were additional volunteers trained to help people with disabilities – including students from the nearby George Washington University studying to become Occupational, Physical, and Speech Language Therapists. Disability-support volunteers wore buttons to help families identify who they could ask for help and accommodations.

Our kids rolled and hunted eggs, met their favorite cartoon characters, posed for photos, participated in physical education activities, STEM projects, and and arts-and-crafted to their hearts’ content! We all left with smiles on our faces and our hearts full. We were excited to see many of the things our families suggested put in place, and the White House has already asked us to provide additional feedback on how they can make the event even better next year.

When the First Lady and President Biden greeted the assembled egg-rollers later in the morning, the President proclaimed “Welcome to the White House —YOUR house!”

Little Lobbyists know that kids with disabilities BELONG in their communities. We are grateful our President, First Lady, and White House understand this, too.

We hope you enjoy the slideshow below sharing all the fun we had! We encourage the White House to continue building on their efforts to be inclusive, and we encourage everyone everywhere to bring people with disabilities and their families to the table to make their own backyards, communities, and events more inclusive. Just look how much fun it can be! 

Hover your cursor over the photos to read the image descriptions in the captions!

Posing with the Easter Bunny

A family poses with the Easter Bunny with the White House in the background

Rolling Easter Eggs

A boy crouches down to roll an egg using a colorful spoon

Easter Egg Champion

A boy & his mom pose in front of the White House—the boy holds up a colorful spoon used to roll the egg

White House Seal

Three children pose in front of huge Easter graphics

Hello Minions!

A boy and a large yellow Minion characters go eye-to-eye

Tossing the Football

A boy cocks his arm to throw a football on a large playing field

White House Photo

A boy and his mom pose in front of the White House, which is decorated with colorful Easter banners

Meet the Minions

A boy and his dad pose with two of the big yellow cartoon characters in front of a tent—the boy is a wheelchair user

Hang Out with Astronauts

A mom poses with a NASA employee—she is behind a big astronaut cut-out which shows her face where the helmet is—her daughter, a wheelchair user, poses beside her.

Beeping Eggs

A girl in a sun hat holds up an Easter Egg designed to beep for those who are blind/low vision

Meet the Cartoon Characters

A family poses with several cartoon characters

White House Selfie

A mom and her daughter take a selfie in front of the White House

True Grit

A mom poses with the Philadelphia Flyers mascot, Gritty

Having Fun

Three children pose in front of the White House

Official Egg Portrait

A family poses next to large, colorful Easter graphics cut-outs—the White House is in the far background

Rolling rolling rolling

Children roll Easter eggs down lanes marked out on the White House lawn

Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires

A family poses with Smokey the Bear

Family Portrait

A family poses in front of a white picket fence with the White House in the background

Egg Decorating

Two girls in bright jackets put stickers and draw on colorful eggs at a table

Gritty for the Win

A boy poses in front of a white picket fence. The NHL mascot Gritty leans over the fence behind him.

Super Certification

Two girls, one who uses a wheelchair, pose with their activity completion certificates

Peanuts Forever

A child poses with the characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy

Robotic Eggs

A girl holds a marker as an automatic egg twirler spins an egg, making decorative lines

Super Heroes

A family, including a son who uses a wheelchair, poses with Superman and Wonder Woman beneath a large tree

Collecting a Prize

A girl who uses a wheelchair collects her prizes from the Easter Egg hunt

Super Snoopy

A mom poses between cartoon characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown

Waiting for Go Time

Four children pose on a street corner outside the White House, waiting to be let into the event.

Peanuts Forever

A family poses with Snoopy and Charlie Brown

Meet Tigger

A young man meets Tigger and Winnie-the-Pooh. You’re never too old

Easter Egg Hunt

A young man shows the Easter eggs he’s found in his blue bucket. The White House is in the background

Family Day

A family poses with the White House in the background

Easter Egg for the Win

A boy carries an egg on a colorful spoon as he moves down a cordoned aisle on the White House lawn

Never Enough Snoopy

Another family poses with Snoopy and Charlie Brown

Egg & Roll

A girl seated in a wheelchair uses an adaptive stick to roll her egg

The Early AM Crowd

A group of Little Lobbyists families poses on a street corner before the event—the Washington Monument is in the background

On Our Way

A group of families poses on the accessible pathways laid across the ground of the Ellipse as they enter the event

The Bidens and Friends

Flanked by two large Easter rabbits, President and Dr. Jill Biden wave from a balcony decorated with flowers and the White House seal

Fountains of Fun

A mom and her son, who uses a walker, pose in front of a fountain encircled by tulips. The White House is in the background.

Snoopy Rocks

A mom poses between Snoopy and Charlie Brown

Ready, Set, Roll!

A group of children, some with adaptive equipment, wait to roll eggs down their lanes on the White House lawn

Family Portrait

A family poses in front of the decorative picket fencing the White House used to separate events

Grab Them While You Can

A boy wearing a fedora and using an adaptive walker holds a mechanical arm grabber while his mom points to eggs he can pick up to put in his bucket

We Count, Too

A girl who uses a wheelchair marks her participation in the event while her dad points to the big chart

Arts & Crafts

Two girls work on making seed necklaces at a table under a tent

Egg Decorating

A young man and his mom work together to decorate an egg using the twirling decorating machine.