About the

CoP for Supporting Families

Collaborating across the nation to build stronger supports for all families

The overall goal of supporting families, with all of their complexity, strengths and unique abilities is so they can best support, nurture, love and facilitate opportunities for the achievement of self-determination, interdependence, productivity, integration, and inclusion in all facets of community life for their family members.

Key Areas of Focus

The National Community of Practice for Supporting Families Across the LifeSpan (CoP) exists to enhance and drive policy, practice, and system transformation to support people with intellectual/developmental disabilities within the context of their families and communities by:

Learn

Learning and sharing best person- and family-centered practices to strengthen systems and supports.

Unite

Uniting across the country around a common value set and language using the principles of supporting families.

Innovate

Creating space (“blue space*”) for state teams and stakeholders to come together and innovate system and community-wide change.

Connect

Connecting like-minded peers across the country for networking and shared learning to enhance and encourage each state’s efforts and implementation strategies.

A Unified Point of View

Membership in the CoP provides states with practical actions which are in sync with and further embed change goals to support the person with disabilities within the context of their family. CoP technical assistance, products, and activities center on ensuring that innovative practices infusing the Charting the LifeCourse Framework integrate into state systems change efforts rather than create new or separate initiatives.

Public state agencies and grassroots stakeholders from each state come together across the nation to learn and exchange information in order to make a lasting difference in their states. These changes are accomplished through anchoring in a common values set, with shared language that empowers and unifies grassroots capacity building with systems application by supporting states in:

  • Listening to and learning from families of people who have disabilities about the way that systems can best change to support people across the lifespan
  • Creating a feedback loop with the system to cultivate mutual support and accountability between the system and grassroots (families and self-advocates)
  • Leveraging partnership that enable systems to have growth and connectivity to effectuate culture change for systems innovation
  • Innovating and sharing learning about best and promising practices, innovations, and implementation strategies for person- and family-centered practices and policy enhancement

*blue space is a term coined by Hanns Meissner in the book Creating Blue Space, and references intentional space to create innovation in the midst of day to day concerns and operations