Community Living Ontario
59^th Annual Conference and AGM

In a world of budget cuts and waiting lists, families and friends have an important role in supporting people with disabilities as they plan for a good life and a secure future.

 

PLAN Toronto has developed an innovative online tool called My Good Life, designed to help support and develop family capacity for future-planning.

 

My Good Life is best described as an interactive magazine that uses compelling stories, documentaries and digital media to inspire families. It offers them practical resources to help them take charge of the future. Learn how your organization can take advantage of this cost effective, co-branded innovation.

Person-centred direct support is about much more than just being with someone. It implies an understanding of the challenges and positive practical steps that engage people who have an intellectual disability with maintaining autonomy, and inclusion in home and community life. This kind of support requires courage, skill, conviction, knowledge, and at times the ability to work outside your comfort zone. It requires continued reflection and testing of limiting assumptions about direct support, community and people’s capacities.

 

This approach will continually improve the quality of life for people being supported and our communities’ ability to welcome and accommodate all people.

 

This session reviews seven challenges that directly affect people’s autonomy and inclusion within community. It outlines practical steps and exercises to improve person-centred direct support.

Successful planning means listening, discussing, and challenging yourself to think outside the box. Marketing professionals from the JWA group will teach participants to write an effective marketing plan.

This session will guide participants through setting out organizational and communication goals. It will walk through concrete steps to meeting those goals by developing a clear understanding of target audiences, tactics for engaging them, and maintaining those relationships. Participants will also learn about budgeting and measuring success.

Individuals with disabilities deserve tools and training to recognize what abuse is, when it is happening and how to stand up against an abuser. They need to understand their rights in order to have a strong voice.

 

In this session, members of Community Living Stratford and Area will share their process and experience of creating teaching tools for self-advocates and staff on the topic of abuse and rights. Participants will see the resources used (including a DVD, written and acted by self-advocates) to educate the CLSA community about rights and exposing abuse. There will also be opportunities to share ideas and best practices.

Service providers in developmental services, long-term care, and mental health are increasingly embracing the values of support without the use of restraint. As agency culture and values move in this direction, there is a growing need for skill training and support to align with these values. Supporting challenging clients without the use of restraint often means changing the way we see the individual, their behaviour, and the underlying values of the organization.

 

In this session, representatives of Citizens Against Restraint and partnering agencies with relevant training will discuss approaches to eliminating restraint. They will also share fresh approaches to cultural change and how training can aid the process.

Community Living Ontario Council members will discuss key issues raised by self-advocates. In the past year, Council has engaged various self-advocates in discussion around issues that matter to them. This session addresses those issues—with a specific focus on transportation advocacy—and what Council is doing and will continue to do about them.

The Federal Government introduced the Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) in 2008 to help individuals and their families plan for their financial wellbeing. This session gives participants an overview of the RDSP and key enhancements to the plan made in the last year. These include: applying for retroactive government contributions, rolling over funds from retirement savings accounts, and various types of payments.

Powerlessness, dependence, and segregation are too often the norm for individuals with disabilities. But when children and adults have the tools they need—including assistive technology and more natural forms of assistance—they can enjoy self-directed lives. They can be involved in their communities and live the lives they dream of. Everyone has the right to live a real life, as part of the real world.

Thelma Wheatley will present on her soon to be released book "And Neither Have I Wings to Fly: Labelled and Locked Up in Canada's Oldest Institution". Following the true story of Daisy Lumsden and her family, the book reveals the shocking facts of the institutionalization and abuse of children and adults with intellectual and physical handicaps in Canada's oldest provincial institution in Orillia. Covering a period from 1900-1966, the book reveals over-crowding and abuses that reached a crux in the 1950s and 1960s when the inmate population was nearly 3000 and focuses on the emergence of eugenic ideology and segregation that came to define the institutional experience.

Evidence shows that workshops led by peers are far more effective for self-advocates than those led by professionals. Aimed at both professionals and self-advocates, this hands-on workshop will equip participants with practical tools for peer education. It will outline key steps to recruiting a Peer Educators Team and to developing an educational workshop led by both a self-advocates and professionals.

 

Peer educators will share their own experiences and integrate role-play, small group exercises, and personal narrative as they inspire and motivate participants to do the same.

As waiting lists get longer and lists of services provided get shorter, it’s time to alter our perceptions of support. We must begin to explore creative alternatives to waiting for traditional services, and stop putting the lives of youth on hold.

 

Try Another Way helps youths who have graduated (or are about to graduate) live their lives to the fullest. It supports them as they explore and discover tools and resources they need to live independently or semi-independently. It encourages them to become responsible, active members of communities, with a focus on sustainable support networks.

 

This session offers an overview of the Ontario Trillium Foundation grant and explores creative alternatives to traditional services. It focuses specifically on three streams: Independent Living, Meaningful Lives, and Families Helping Families/Networking.

These two workshops are being offered in conjunction to offer the full spectrum of information regarding social enterprise. Community Living Organizations are poised for growth in social enterprise, thanks to legislative changes in the sector. These sessions equip leaders with information, resources, connections, and practical tools to ensure organizational stability and success.

 

Workshop #1 - What’s All the Buzz About?

This beginner-level workshop introduces the concepts and language of social enterprise. Participants will gain a basic understanding of the social enterprise field and information and resources to support their organization’s exploration of social enterprise development.

 

Workshop #2 - How to Implement Social Enterprise

Thorough planning is critical to the success of social enterprises. The path of social enterprise development moves through a succession of necessary steps—from clarifying vision and objectives to mastering the challenge of growth and change in the business. This session will walk through an overview of four keys to social enterprise: organizational readiness, feasibility study, business plan, and measurement. It will also explore the legal issues of social enterprise in Ontario.  

The new Ontario Not-for-profit Corporations Act comes into effect later this year, replacing existing legislation that has governed the creation and operation of non-profit corporations for over 100 years. Community Living Ontario and its affiliates are among the 46,000+ not-for-profit corporations that come under the authority of the new Act. It’s essential to learn about the changes it will make to the way Community Living organizations conduct their affairs.

 

This session will focus on the four guiding principles that the new statute embodies: transparency and accountability, flexibility and permissiveness, responsiveness and efficiency, and fairness. Participants will learn how the Act will enhance corporate governance and accountability, simplify the incorporation and organizational change process, give more rights to members, and better protect directors and officers from personal liability.

The Ministry of Community and Social Services recently introduced Regulation 299/10 Quality Assurance Measures (QAM) aimed at ensuring that people receive safe and effective supports and services.  The regulation calls for some measures that people interpret as being more about bureaucratic process and accountability than about actual quality improvement.  

 

This session, coordinated by the Community Living Ontario Freedom from Harm Working Group, will look at the actions of three local Associations aimed at complying with the regulation in ways that work to ensure true improvement in quality of the supports provided to people and enhanced safeguards for those receiving support.

When individuals or families disagree with an administrative decision regarding their support or services, there is little information available regarding how to make an appeal. Unless they can afford a lawyer, most walk away, discouraged by a complicated and often hostile process.

 

This session highlights a new CLO initiative: the Administrative Justice Support Network. Designed to offer basic information on making appeals before key tribunals, the initiative will connect individuals to others who have gone through the appeal process. Participants will learn about navigating a number of tribunals including the Social Benefits Tribunal, the Special Education Tribunal, the Landlord Tenant Board, the Health Services Appeal and Review Board, and several others. We will use real stories to illustrate the support families can offer one another through this challenging process.

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Person-centred direct support is about much more than just being with someone. It implies an understanding of the challenges and positive practical steps that engage people who have an intellectual disability with maintaining autonomy, and inclusion in home and community life. This kind of support requires courage, skill, conviction, knowledge, and at times the ability to work outside your comfort zone. It requires continued reflection and testing of limiting assumptions about direct support, community and people’s capacities. 

 

This approach will continually improve the quality of life for people being supported and our communities’ ability to welcome and accommodate all people.

 

This session reviews seven challenges that directly affect people’s autonomy and inclusion within community. It outlines practical steps and exercises to improve person-centred direct support.

The people and families we support have diverse backgrounds and identities that need to be supported in their entirety. Supporting diverse identities can be difficult when there is a lack of awareness and acknowledgement. Various ethnic groups may have taboos and misconceptions pertaining to intellectual disabilities, limiting opportunities for their family members. How can a person with an intellectual disability have a full life if they are not supported at their local mosque; if they are not able to celebrate cultural holidays in their group home; or if they can’t identify as lesbian or gay?

 

The increasing diversity of our communities highlights the need to pay particular attention to ethnic and religious backgrounds, and individual sexual identity. People with intellectual disabilities do not have full control of their lives if they are not supported to practice their cultural traditions, religious customs, and sexuality. We need greater awareness of how to support diversity, and challenges that may arise when doing so.

 

This session will challenge participants to think outside the box when working with a diverse population of people with intellectual disabilities. It will examine ways we can ensure people in all cultural communities are free from harm and have control of their lives.

Presenter:   Rick Tutt

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In fall 2010 three Waterloo organizations partners to build an apartment complex for six residents. Four individuals are supported by local Community Living organizations. The other two tenants are Social Development Studies students at the Renison University College—offering friendship and social support to their neighbours. In return the students receive accommodation and tuition for the SDS program.

 

The group created a 24-hour support model through community support networks, resident employment, family, friends and the student residents. This level of support still costs less than a quarter of a traditional 4-person group home. Through partnerships and donations, the $1 million housing project was fully funded before residents moved in.

 

Learn how Elmira Developmental Support Corporation, Elmira District Community Living and the Region of Waterloo Housing Department built and sustained this innovative project.