New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appearance at the New York State Capital this week generated several headlines, with more of New York State’s top officials planning to testify in budget hearings through the end of the month.

While those officials have received the most time, questioning, and attention, there’s also a grassroots, advocacy element to this budget hearing process at the Capital.

Marcella Goheen, Founder of Essential Care Visitor, is one example of bringing that advocacy on a yearly basis.

“I wanted them to support the Family Essential Program of New York State, which is a great new model of helping families inside of nursing homes. And it’s a family program that we want to be in every nursing home by the end of 2027, so we wrote a bill that both sits in the Senate and Assembly, and my testimony was overviewing the needs of the families in New York State today that have to make that very difficult choice of putting their loved one in a nursing home,” she told CBS6.

The bill “Creates the family essential program within the office for the aging to provide for advocacy, collaborative and education infrastructure for essential family caregivers within nursing homes and other long term care communities.” The legislation is part of New York’s Master Plan for Aging (recommendation 46), some of which is being implemented for the first time in this State Budget.

“Nursing homes need to be communities of care, not a deplorable place, that it’s a last ditch decision you have to make where our society looks at them as an abhorrent, you know, decision they have to make.,” Goheen says. “They need to be destinations of communities of care. So our Family Essential Program is actually a step in that right direction in terms of creating an infrastructure that is impactful. We served over 1,035 families last year on $25,000, so our ask to the state is, we want to scale it up now, full stop, jump start it to all 11 regions, so that family that’s suffering in the community that has to put their loved one in long term care facility can have the support they need in a peer to peer, to peer, non-clinical model.”

Stay tuned for the full conversation with Goheen about her testimony.