A Message from ACL: ILT/TA Announcement

Source: Administration for Community Living (ACL)

Dear friends and colleagues in IL,

In our commitment to transparency and keeping the lines of communication open between ACL and the IL network, we wanted to provide an update on the IL training and technical assistance (T/TA) contract. We recently announced the Partnership of Inclusive Disaster Strategies (PIDS) was awarded a contract to deliver IL T/TA. A bid protest was filed, which is a challenge to the award of a contract. Under bid protest procedures, a stop work order was placed on the contract. As of October 30, the contract has been terminated. Since this is a litigation matter, we are limited in the information we can provide.

We are actively working with HHS Office of Acquisition Management Service (OAMS) to resolicit a new contract for IL T/TA. In the interim, we will continue to ensure you have access to the IL T/TA services you need, which is as follows:

ILRU will leave up most of their resources on the ILRU website. (The RAPID courses, however, are not currently available, but we are working on a plan to access them.) We also have resources at ACL.

We have a team of IL experts that were former CIL and SILC directors you can access for help. Most were referred to us from ILRU with many years of experience in IL and will be helpful to you when needed. The expert team includes Candie Burnham, Bob Hand, Liz Padral, and Joe Bravo. Our Program Officers (POs), as well as Erica McFadden and Ed Ahern, are also available to provide T/TA, and our fiscal office will continue to provide T/TA around any fiscal questions. 

We are in the process of scheduling monthly calls / townhalls with the IL network and additional training sessions from the Office of Independent Living (OILP) staff. The first OILP connection / town hall call will be on November 21 at 3:00 p.m. EST; the Zoom for this meeting can be accessed here: https://hhsgov.zoomgov.com/j/1602812480

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to your PO with any T/TA needs. We are tracking and routing current T/TA requests, as well as delivering T/TA, to ensure your needs are met. We want to make sure we support you during this transition.

As always, we appreciate hearing your ideas and concerns, and will answer the questions you have to the best of our ability. It takes trust, partnership, and collaboration between all of us to ensure IL is supported, as many barriers are removed as possible, and IL is truly advanced across agencies and into society.

We know the value and importance of quality T/TA in doing IL work. We are committed to making sure you have access to it. We will send updates as we are able. Until then, please reach out to your PO with any needs or concerns.

All of the best,

The OILP team