Partnerships

Grantees are required to have coordinated partnerships with at least 

one Developmental Disabilities (DD) Network agency and one state-wide 

agency. Other possible partnerships include local and state-level advocacy 

organizations, local government agencies, and provider agencies. Partners 

should be involved in the design, implementation, and replication of grantee 

activities.

Featured Practices

The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the Wisconsin

Board for People with Developmental Disabilities (BPDD) in 2018. A significant component of 

the state’s strategy is its large number of partnerships with diverse organizations including many highly 

specialized subject area experts. The BPDD partners with state agencies, private advocacy organizations, and 

providers. These partnerships enable Wisconsin to obtain expertise in areas including, but not limited to, 

outreach and support to self-advocates and families, policy and practice recommendations, implementation 

of the Personal Outcomes Measurement tool, stakeholder input, evaluation processes, project dissemination, 

and access to relevant datasets.

For example, the BPDD’s partnership with People First Wisconsin, a state-wide self-advocacy organization 

for with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and The Arc Wisconsin, strengthens the voices of selfadvocates and families in policy change and program initiatives. The partnership with InControl Wisconsin 

provides the state with expertise on improving and advancing meaningful connections in the community as 

well as integrated employment opportunities, outcomes, and services for people with disabilities. Partnering 

with InControl helps Wisconsin build strong partnerships within the state and create diverse labor solutions 

for employers to support positive life outcomes for individuals with disabilities. A central component of 

BPDD’s Living Well initiative is six pilot sites that will be mentored and supported by the state’s partnerships 

with Headwaters, Opportunity Development Centers, and Opportunity Inc., three organizations with 

extensive experience in person-centered operational improvements and service transformation. Through 

triannual meetings with these organizations and groups, Wisconsin is using their partnerships as a key 

component for success in their Living Well work.

Key Takeaways

• Wisconsin’s variety of partners enhances their grant activities by ensuring that no voice is left 

out of the conversation and all views are included in each project initiative. 

• Many of the advocacy organizations, provider organizations, and state agencies are highly 

specialized and offer authority on particular topics. 
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Meaningful and Active Engagement 

With Self-Advocates and Families 

Grantees are required to have continuous, meaningful, and active 

engagement of self-advocates and family members throughout the life 

cycle and in all aspects of the project.

Featured Practices

The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) awarded a five-year Living Well grant to Virginia Commonwealth 

University (VCU) in 2017. The majority of the grant leadership team is composed of agency staff who 

are either individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) or who have family 

members with I/DD. This involvement of self-advocates and family members ensures that the 

voices of self-advocates and their families are actively considered in all stages of the project development 

and implementation. Furthermore, the state is piloting an initiative to train self-advocates to serve as peer 

mentors and counselors. The Leadership for Empowerment & Abuse Prevention training is co-led by Virginia 

self-advocates, and it teaches individuals with I/DD about healthy relationships and abuse prevention.

AoD awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the Alaska Governor’s Council on Disabilities and Special 

Education (DD Council) in 2018. As part of their efforts to increase family engagement, the 

Alaska Living Well team solicited input from family members of individuals with I/DD and 

self-advocates while developing multiple direct support professional (DSP) trainings. These 

individuals also supported planning and leading the annual state stakeholder summit. A leadership team 

comprised of four self-advocates ensured that that the unique experiences of individuals with I/DD were 

heard throughout the discussions and breakout activities. To increase the accessibility of the information that 

was presented at the Summit to the attendees, a graphic facilitator created straightforward, image-based notes 

that captured the highlights of the discussion and were displayed on a large screen. 

Key Takeaways

• Active engagement of self-advocates and family members is a crucial part of all Living Well 

grant work and both Alaska and Virginia include self-advocates and family members in all 

aspects of their initiatives. 

• As co-trainers in Virginia, self-advocates ensure that their perspective is highlighted during 

trainings for DSPs. 

• As grant team staff in Alaska and Virginia, family members of people with I/DD provide 

valuable insights and help direct and maintain each team’s vision and goals. 
Evidence Based Practices for 

Service Improvements

Grantees must design, identify and implement a range of evidence based practices 

or innovative strategies to support people with developmental disabilities living 

in the community. These practices should (1) improve access to and quality of 

community services, (2) reduce and mitigate abuse and neglect, and (3) support 

empowerment, self-determination, and self-advocacy.

Featured Practices

The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the Wisconsin Board for 

People with Developmental Disabilities (BPDD) in 2018. Wisconsin is utilizing one of their projects, 

Building Full Lives, to expand best practices focused on providing individualized supports and services 

to help individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities build skills, have meaningful 

contributions and connections to community, and secure employment. Wisconsin is incorporating their best 

practices into multiple Living Well project pilot sites. Wisconsin also has numerous partnerships with local 

agencies and various provider agencies that assist with developing and implementing evidence based practices 

such as learning collaboratives, comprehensive agency self-assessments, action plans, person-centered planning, 

development of peer networks, community conversations, and supported decision making that enable sites to 

achieve positive organizational and cultural change.

AoD awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the University of Missouri-Kansas City Institute for 

Human Development (UMKC–IHD) in 2018. UMKC-IHD is piloting their Living Well model with 

six county boards that were early adopters of the Charting the LifeCourse (CtLC) framework. CtLC is 

an evidence-informed approach based on the core belief that individuals of all abilities and ages should develop 

their vision of a good life and have the right to live, love, work, play, and pursue their dreams in their community. 

In collaboration with their pilot sites, the Missouri Living Well team is using the CtLC framework to guide their 

interpretation of data and capacity building activities. Statewide, Missouri is planning a pilot with Therap to test 

the ability to use electronic data collection systems to collect and track information about specific outcomes and 

how they are related to the Living Well framework in the state and how that impacts overall quality of health. 

Additionally, the team has created a guide to support self-advocates to avoid victimization. 

Key Takeaways

• It is early in the process for grantees to identify and implement evidence based practices.

• Both Wisconsin and Missouri have looked to established projects to identify evidence based 

practices that they could use to promote success of their Living Well initiatives.

• Wisconsin partnered with experts to identify and guide evidence based practices.

• Missouri is effectively leveraging their existing relationships with stakeholders and have aligned 

the Living Well project initiatives with Standards of Practice for direct support professionals 

(DSPs), support coordinators, and providers, as well as national survey instruments such as the 

National Core Indicators.
Building the Competencies and 

Capacities of DSPs and HCBS Providers

Prevention-based tools and technical assistance to address common needs of 

direct support professionals (DSPs) and provider agencies. Goals of trainings 

and other supports include eliminating the ‘culture of abuse and neglect’ 

in home and community-based services (HCBS) settings and transferring 

knowledge of positive behavior and alternate communication strategies.

Featured Practices

The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) awarded a five-year Living Well grant the University 

of Georgia Institute on Human Development and Disability (IHDD) in 2017. The grant team 

is using the College of Direct Support (CDS), a series of courses delivered through an online learning 

platform, to develop and provide trainings to DSPs and other HCBS provider staff. Examples of available 

course topics include Employment Supports, Person-Centered Planning, and Community Inclusion. 

Provider organization administrators are responsible for creating training modules, uploading in-house 

trainings, and assigning trainings for their staff. The platform allows for a balance between the state 

standards that courses are required to fulfill and the flexibility for provider agencies and DSPs to choose 

courses of best fit. Staff can access courses individually or as part of career paths designed for new hires, 

front line supervisors, and other provider agency positions. Learners can view content specialized to their 

current position or begin a new career path. The Georgia Living Well team intends to add more specialized 

paths, including employment supports and support of older adults.

Furthermore, all provider partners have memberships to the National Alliance for Direct Support 

Professionals, which gives access to additional trainings and resources, such as the annual Informed 

Decision-Making training. The IHDD also offers opportunities for DSPs to attend leadership promotion 

activities, conferences, and workshop trainings.

Key Takeaways

• Through the CDS platform, Georgia created access to a variety of options for DSPs to further 

their professional development.

• By making courses available online, giving flexibility in course selection to DSPs and providers, 

and providing opportunities to attend events, the Georgia Living Well grant team is encouraging 

each DSP to explore their own career advancement. DSPs are exposed to issues and topics that 

they may not typically see in their everyday environment and experiences of others in their 

field. 
Reducing Abuse and Neglect 

through Community Monitoring

Grantees must work to develop and implement or improve a coordinated 

community monitoring system aimed at reducing abuse and neglect through the 

collection, analysis, and dissemination of data.

Featured Practices

The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the Virginia 

Commonwealth University (VCU) Partnership for People with Disabilities in 2017. The 

grantee team is taking steps to improve the state’s critical incident reporting process by refining the incident 

reporting platform, clarifying the process of reporting an incident for both individuals with intellectual and 

developmental disabilities (I/DD) and other community members, and improving the collection of incident 

reporting data. One of the state’s partners, the disAbility Law Center, is conducting interviews with individuals 

with I/DD and using their experiences to guide the reporting process.

The AoD awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the Center on Disabilities and Human Development 

in 2018. Idaho’s Living Well grant initiatives involves working with self-advocates of the Quality 

Assurance Workgroup and Mission Analytics in order to better quantify abuse, neglect, and 

exploitation. Using this information, the state is in the process of developing a person-friendly and accessible 

statewide reporting model and tool for critical incidents.

Key Takeaways

• Both Virginia and Idaho are increasing the monitoring of abuse and neglect by collecting and 

examining more data, though each state is taking a different approach. 

• Virginia’s approach to improve the reporting process focuses on the experiences of people with 

I/DD through targeted interviews. 

• The Idaho Living Well team is building a statewide data reporting system for substantiated 

complaints of abuse and neglect against direct support professionals (DSPs), which will improve 

statewide incident tracking and prevent future cases of abuse and neglect. 
Addressing Health and Safety 

with Data Tools

Grantees are required to identify and address reoccurring health and safety 

concerns in home and community-based services using data tools 

and a coordinated system for community monitoring.

Featured Practices

The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the University 

of New Hampshire Institute on Disability (UNHIOD) in 2017. One of the state’s most pressing 

categories of critical incidents is medication administration errors that lead to health and safety 

incidents. UNHIOD determined that many of the direct support professionals (DSPs) who lost or are at risk 

of losing their medication administration privileges do not speak English as their native language, while 

medication administration training was provided only in English. In order to address this, New Hampshire 

is supporting efforts to improve the medication administration training by offering classes in Spanish, 

Nepali, and Dzongkha (Bhutanese).

The AoD awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the Indiana Family and Social Services 

Administration (FSSA) in 2018. FSSA is exploring options for using Tableau, a data visualization 

software, as a monitoring tool. The team will use Tableau to create diagrams and charts using data 

collected by case managers. Data will be broken into subsets such as by county, race/ethnicity, gender, and 

diagnosis. These data visualizations will be used by case managers and provider organizations to display 

clean, easily understandable data points during stakeholder meetings to better assess quality outcomes. The 

Indiana Living Well team is in the process of determining quality outcomes and goals to determine their 

intended data collection, analysis, and presentation methodology.

Key Takeaways

• Project initiatives from the New Hampshire and Indiana Living Well teams demonstrate 

approaches that are driven by goals to resolve and improve chronic, long-standing state-level 

issues. 

• UNHIOD’s initiative to offer medication administration trainings in common first languages 

of DSPs will help prevent medication errors thereby increasing health and safety of individuals 

receiving services. 

• The Indiana Living Well team is using a specialized data visualization tool to collect and analyze 

data to help providers identify and address issues of health and safety. 
Program and Outcome 

Evaluation

Grantees are expected to conduct process and outcome evaluations. The process 

evaluation should analyze initiative planning, development, and implementation 

to identify successful strategies as well as barriers. The summative outcomes 

evaluation should determine key initiatives driving the success of the model and 

how well the overall model is achieving the goals of the Living Well grant.

Featured Practices

The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the University of 

Georgia Institute on Human Development and Disability (IHDD) in 2017. To evaluate progress, 

Georgia hired a dedicated evaluation director who developed a monitoring and evaluation Excel 

spreadsheet that tracks project outcomes and data points through multiple sources including interviews 

with provider agencies to evaluate progress. For each training conducted through the Living Well project, 

Georgia measured outcomes through experience surveys, tracking effectiveness and identifying areas for 

improvement. Georgia is also using the Therap Business Intelligence (BI) tool to track indicators over time, 

filter and analyze data, and produce real-time ad-hoc trend reports. The grant team developed two outcome 

measures within the Therap BI platform to refine the data that are collected. 

The AoD awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the University of New Hampshire Institute 

on Disability (UNHIOD) in 2017. New Hampshire is developing a quality assessment tool with 

the potential to replicate in other states. UNHIOD worked with state partners to access quarterly 

satisfaction survey results and combine them with a statewide annual survey of direct support professionals. 

This allowed the grant team to assess provider capacity and competencies as well as project outcomes. The 

state aims to standardize and shift surveys to an electronic medium to facilitate consistency in future data 

analysis.

Key Takeaways

• Though both grantees are only in the second year of the grant, they are making noticeable 

progress on the evaluation component.

• The Georgia grant team’s real-time evaluation of trainings enables the state to ensure training 

effectiveness and pursue modifications immediately.

• New Hampshire, like other grantees, recognized that there was a sizeable amount of already 

being collected in the state. Consequently, UNHIOD is working to gather and centralize these 

data sources. 
Sustainability

It is expected that community monitoring and capacity building systems developed 

by grantees are sustainable beyond the term of the Living Well grant. Efforts to 

assure organizational, financial, or community stability to continue and refine 

grantee work should be considered during the course of the grant.

Featured Practices

The Administration on Disabilities (AoD) awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the Alaska 

Governor’s Council on Disabilities and Special Education (DD Council) in 2018. To ensure 

financial sustainability once federal grant funding ends, Alaska is working closely with the Alaska 

Mental Health Trust Authority, a state organization that administers the Alaska Mental Health Trust, a 

perpetual trust to improve the lives of beneficiaries, which include Alaskans with developmental disabilities. 

The Council includes the Trust in their larger partner meetings with a goal of aligning initiatives and 

securing future funding opportunities. Alaska is also exploring options to enhance its website to include a 

permanent location for trainings developed as part of the Living Well grant work.

The AoD awarded a five-year Living Well grant to the University of New Hampshire Institute on 

Disability (UNHIOD) in 2017. The UNHIOD works closely with Community Support Network 

Inc., the association for the state’s ten area agencies representing the majority of the state provider 

workforce. Parallel to the Living Well grant, CSNI engaged in a strategic planning process to identify 

strategies to address systemic issues faced by their members: expanding the workforce pipeline, increasing 

retention, establishing direct support professional (DSP) professionalization, and identifying promising 

incentives. In partnership with CSNI, New Hampshire’s Living Well grant team builds DSP and home and 

community-based services provider capacity consistent with a statewide vision that will be sustained beyond 

the Living Well grant. 

Key Takeaways

• While the Alaska DD Council and UNHIOD are in the initial years of their grant, both 

teams are making intentional efforts to consider sustainability partnerships with larger, more 

permanent organizations.

• Alaska is working closely with partners, such as the Mental Health Trust Authority, to integrate 

Living Well project work with existing projects and grants.

• Alaska is also finding a permanent home for the trainings created under the Living Well grant, 

so that they will continue to be available once the grant ends. 

• New Hampshire is working to align their work with that of their partners to improve the state 

provider workforce and build a system that will continue to support the professionalization of 

DSPs after the end of the Living Well grant.