The Badass of the Disability System

Maureen Welch (she/her) is the founder Navigating Disability Colorado (NDC), but she’s better known as the Badass of Colorado’s disability system. NDC’s mission is to empower the disability community to effectively advocate for services. She’s dedicated her life to this mission by giving disabled people and their families the knowledge and support they need to live their best lives.

Maureen is a recovering teacher who encountered the disability ‘industrial complex’ when she struggled to navigate the system herself. In 2012, she was the special education transition teacher for Project SEARCH, an innovative school-to-work transition program at Children’s Hospital Colorado. She taught young people (ages 18-21) with intellectual and developmental disabilities who were gaining work experience in hospital internships. She was also in charge of implementing adult services, including facilitating applications for social security benefits and Medicaid waiver services. She encountered first-hand the complexity, bureaucracy and barriers of the Colorado disability benefits system.

She began to question how to best support her young disabled son long-term. She found out that her Community Centered Board hadn’t advised her to apply for a Medicaid waiver, even though her son qualified. Her passion for her son and her students inspired her to learn about disability benefits and services. It was a journey marked by frustration, misinformation and red tape. Eventually, she learned enough to get her son on the CES waiver.