Model Communities

These two presentations cover community access and inclusion for persons with disabilities, a focus of the Idaho Real Choice Systems Change Grants. The presentations provide guidelines for planning for community access and a model for assessment of community inclusion.

This article is aimed at developing tools to help human service providers form partnerships to address and prevent stigmatization of people with disabilities. The Idaho State University Institute of Rural Health (ISU-IRH) developed two anti-stigma social marketing campaigns that incorporated methods to empower people, campaign design and distribution, and methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of the campaign.

This presentation gives a brief overview of Idaho’s Real Choice grant and Money Follows the Person grant. The goals of the project were to: reduce the stigmatization of people with disabilities, complete and economic analysis of the current Medicaid system, community development, and to complete and effectiveness study. Review their key activities, methodology, and evaluation.

The report presents six strategies or policy levers, gleaned from previous research reports that can be implemented on the federal and local levels to promote collaboration and coordination and support livable community objectives. Examples were selected from a vast array of actions that can be taken. Each of the strategies is illustrated by actual promising practices at both the federal and state levels that can be adapted and replicated elsewhere.

With this funding for Systems Transformation, CMS will be awarding several states and non-profit agencies with small supplemental grants. States and other eligible organizations, in partnership with their disability and aging communities, may submit proposals to design and construct systems infrastructure that will result in effective and enduring improvements in community long-term support systems.

The Compendium contains basic information about each of the Real Choice Systems Change Grantees. The Compendium will help you learn more about how these grants will be used to allow more people of all ages with a disability or long term illness to live and participate in their communities. Real Choice Systems Change Grantees will also find the Compendium useful to identify other Grantees with similar goals and activities. The fifth edition of the Compendium replaces all previous editions.

The Real Choice System Change project at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Disabilities administered a Community Inclusion Assessment to determine the level and quality of inclusion in Connecticut communities. The papers in this series are based on a (non-random) sample of 250 individuals with disabilities who completed an in-depth survey. Real Choice Briefing Paper #1 explores the accessibility of public and private places.

Are citizens with disabilities able to participate in all desired aspects of community life in the town in which they live? The Real Choice System Change Community Inclusion Assessment was launched “to determine the level and quality of inclusion in Connecticut communities.” Consumers with disabilities and their families were recruited to answer this survey both on-line and via telephone.

This tool kit was developed at the request of volunteers, advocates, self-advocates, and professionals concerned with preserving the remarkable progress made towards the inclusion of people with cognitive, intellectual and developmental disabilities into the mainstream of community life in America. To fight disinformation and segregation, this tool kit provides the philosophy, policy and research rationale that supports community supports and services for all people with disabilities.

At the heart of the April 28 Forum in Griswold, CT was a presentation by Greg Ryan of CT Assets Network, Inc. Asset Based Community Development is based on the work of Kretzman & McKnight, authors of Building Communities From the Inside Out: A Path For Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. It works on the principles that each person in the community, including people with disabilities, has gifts to offer, and can contribute their gifts & resources for mutually beneficial problem solving.