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, along with the MI Community, Home, and Health Ombudsman (formerly known as the MI Health Link Ombudsman (MHLO) and the MI Choice, Community Transition Services, and PACE Ombudsman Program (MICPOP) programs).
MEJI has also piloted two new programs, the Michigan Nursing Home Transparency and Accountability Project and the Michigan Advancing Guardianship Innovations Center. M – TAP, working in collaboration with national experts and the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long Term Care, seeks to examine how Michigan nursing homes allocated millions of dollars of public funds and whether those taxpayer dollars are used appropriately to meet residents’ critical needs. MAGIC is driving innovative approaches to protecting and empowering vulnerable individuals at risk of or under guardianship.
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.