Meji Home
Mission and Vision
MEJI seeks to empower, educate, and protect low income older adults and adults with disabilities on issues that have the greatest impact on their independence, health, dignity, and security. We marshal our legal and advocacy skills to support these at-risk populations in overcoming injustice and inequity, enforcing rights, and achieving quality of life and care.
MEJI is honored to work with individual clients to attain their goals. Those individual cases, along with MEJI's work in many coalitions, inform its systemic advocacy and help identify advocacy priorities. MEJI uses all of the tools in its toolbox -- administrative and policy advocacy, litigation, coalition building, and education efforts -- to achieve systemic reforms.
History
MEJI was established in 2011 with a single staff attorney to focus on the legal needs of some of the most vulnerable older adults and adults with disabilities in Michigan and to ensure Michigan has a voice in national advocacy efforts on behalf of these populations. Since its inception, MEJI's staff and programs have grown significantly to fill gaps in advocacy for older adults and adults with disabilities, push successfully for systemic reforms, become a trusted source of information on issues that affect vulnerable adults, and collaborate with and educate clients, advocates, providers, and policymakers.
MEJI now serves as the home of the statewide Michigan Long Term Care Ombudsman Program, the MI Health Link Ombudsman (MHLO) Program, and the MI Choice, Community Transition Services, and PACE Ombudsman Program (MICPOP) program.
MEJI helped to establish and works in close collaboration with the Crime Victims Legal Assistance Project-Elder Justice (CVLAP), a statewide program that represents victims of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. MEJI also recently launched an innovative Guardianship Diversion Pilot Project in four county probate courts.
With additional staff, MEJI has expanded its ability to serve on state and national boards, task forces, and coalitions and to share its successful advocacy strategies in presentations and publications.
MEJI is a program of Michigan Statewide Advocacy Services administered by the Michigan Advocacy Program.