Dear Provider,

Please consider joining PAR. For over 39 years PAR has dedicated itself to one primary interest – improving the quality of supports and services provided by Pennsylvania’s community intellectual disabilities and autism providers.

In the last decade of the association’s work, our growth in supports and services has topped 400%. With services now provided in over 7,800 sites across the state in every county, plus numerous non-residential and in-home supports, PAR’s representation of community intellectual disabilities supports and services remains the largest in Pennsylvania.

Through PAR’s strong national association, ANCOR (the American Network of Community Options and Resources), PAR links with other associations nationwide to achieve effective policy in Washington. In Pennsylvania, PAR members have worked together to achieve budget support of $2.1 billion for intellectual disabilities, making intellectual disabilities the fourth largest appropriation in the Commonwealth.

Pennsylvania’s intellectual disabilities system is also one of the largest in the nation. Its preservation and growth requires a provider association focused solely on intellectual disabilities issues. Our focused involvement with the administration and the legislature enables PAR to present intellectual disabilities services as distinctive – unique in its issues and solutions.

The association prides itself as being the best education and information resource for community intellectual disabilities providers in the Commonwealth with information alerts and advisories to members via email averaging 5 to 6 times a week, with regional roundtables, conferencing around members’ issues and quarterly Board meetings which are open to and well-attended by PAR’s general membership.

In addition to its strong government relations activities in policy development and advocacy for state and federal funding, PAR provides educational benefi ts to the whole community through PAR’s Annual Solutions Conference and our Spring Mini-Conference, and to its members through policy and training conference calls and seminars.

PAR provides business options which include endorsed insurance products, group purchasing options, and software solutions for financial and quality management. Perhaps the best benefit of all is the opportunity to work in a collegial and caring provider atmosphere on a worthy mission – working together to improve the availability and quality of intellectual disabilities supports and services to individuals and their families.

We invite you to join PAR to strengthen your alliance with other community intellectual disabilities providers and to give you access to important and strategic information and people that are important to the viability of your agency.

As the President and CEO of PAR for well over a decade, I am convinced that PAR will bring benefits to you and your agency that go well beyond what I have described.

Most of the community intellectual disabilities and autism services in Pennsylvania are being provided by PAR members. PAR is their association of choice to help them do their work more effectively. We hope you will feel that way too. Please join us.