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Florida - On September 30, 2007, The Council on Quality and Leadership (CQL) was named partner to a grant award with the State of Florida, Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) to focus on community quality of life. The Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded APD the Real Choice Systems Change: Person-Centered Planning Implementation Grant.
On September 22, 23 and 24, 2009, Devereux Florida partnered as lead agency with APD and CQL, to bring to the Orlando Downtown Area one of the products from this grant: The LENS Project.
LENS is an active, dynamic workshop designed to guide community organizations to explore quality of life within a community context and to develop a strategic community focus, while at the same time addressing the needs of the people it supports. During the workshop, participants learned skills to gather and analyze data about quality and community life; reframe their thinking to look at the community as a whole surrounding our organization-beyond the disability perspective; strategize how to use the data to impact organizational planning processes; investigate and make new potential partnerships; and plan strategic initiatives to enhance quality of community life.
We had 41 people take part on the workshop; the group demographics consisted of service providers (supported living coaches, support coordinators, nurses, service workers, group home operators) mainly for people with IDD. The group divided into the four areas we chose to explore, namely health, education, housing and employment. Half of the participants went out into the community to interview, observe, and get information concerning available resources, programs and assessing the accessibility of information for the general population. The goal of the program was to assess availability of services to the general population, not only people with special needs. The task was to identify local community strengths and areas of need. The other half of the group stayed on the premises, some talking to area representatives that were invited and attended in each of the identifies areas; some doing internet and library data search on the four areas identified. The task, for the remainder of the workshop, was to bring the participants together into groups consisting of participants in each of the four areas, to identify the areas of needs and develop an "action plan" to improve/enhance community life. The workshop closed with four outstanding presentations from each group and great ideas thought of during the workshop.
Jose Hernandez, program director for Devereux Florida, says “We all came out of this workshop exhausted, but with a long list of new friends….sharing the common goal of giving back to our Community!” To learn more about Devereux Florida, visit www.devereuxfl.org or call 1-800-DEVEREUX.
About Devereux Florida
The Devereux Foundation, founded in 1912 in Pennsylvania, planted roots in Brevard County just over 20 years ago, to create Devereux Florida. The organization has grown by leaps and bounds to meet the needs of children and families in Florida. What began with our programs in Viera, today Devereux Florida operates almost 50 programs in 35 counties statewide, touching the lives of over 13,000 children on an annual basis. To learn more about Devereux Florida, please visit www.devereuxfl.org.
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