Guidepost 3: Develop Relationships & Build Skills to Decrease Reliance on Paid Supports

CLE activities should focus on:

Teaching specific skills to help people access their communities and employment, with the intention of fading supports.

Support staff can help people build specific job and community engagement skills by modeling: directly teaching specific skills around daily living, community access and employment.

Another strategy for skill-building is providing time-limited one-to-one supports to teach people new skills that would then allow them to participate in community activities with less ongoing support. This initial investment in skill building makes it easier to fade supports in the longer term.

A third strategy is to provide peer-to-peer support, such as having a person with more mastery of a particular skill (such as riding the bus) teach or support someone who is still learning that skill.

Building individuals’ networks to expand their access to natural supports.

As people make more connections in their communities, they can use the relationships they are building to create natural supports. Tapping into one’s social circle as a source of natural supports can then lead to a level of interdependence with others in the community that helps with the fading of formal, paid supports. For example, coworkers and fellow volunteers can provide on-the-job guidance on tasks, or a church member can give someone a ride to services.

Here are some additional resources to help providers apply Guidepost 3:

• Guidepost 3: Help People Build Relationships to Decrease Dependence on Paid Supports (Engage Brief 6). This brief describes the third guidepost and how service providers are implementing it based on expert interviews and case studies. (ICI Engage Brief #6)

• Transcen’s Worklink Program: Helping Individuals Gain Work Skills through Targeted Volunteering and Other Community Life Engagement Activities: This promising practice describes how TransCen’s Work Link program provides supports for both employment and CLE. Staff seek out volunteer work and other CLE activities that offer opportunities for people to gain employment skills. (ICI Service Provider Promising Practice)

• Promising Practice: Fading Supports at SEEC: Seeking Equality, Empowerment, and Community (SEEC) is a Maryland-based provider of employment, community living, and community development supports to people with IDD. This promising practice demonstrates how SEEC uses multiple strategies to decrease paid supports for CLE, including offering short-term intensive supports for skill building and intentionally building relationships for natural support. (ICI Service Provider Promising Practice)

• Friends: Connecting People with Disabilities and Community Members: This publication from the University of Minnesota provides ideas for how to support people with disabilities to increase community membership and belonging.

• Thinkwork Story: Natural Supports at Work: In this 6-minute video, Carrie, who works in the kitchen at a private school, has built relationships with her colleagues that have “enabled her to be successful at her job and form friendships that extend beyond the workday.

We sometimes use two new terms in reference to this guidepost: human capital and social capital. Human capital refers to the specific skills an individual can bring to their job and to community experiences. Social capital means the individual’s network of relationships with other people and the value inherent in that network.

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