CHAMPLAIN COMMUNITY SERVICES

CCS seeks to build a community where everyone participates and belongs. We provide an array of supports to people with intellectual disabilities and autism - at work, at home, at school, for life. We deliver services with a personal approach: individualized, carefully coordinated, and community based.

Our focus is employment, so our goal is to eliminate the stigma of disability in the workplace and support those we serve in gaining meaningful, minimum-wage or higher jobs that fill real needs for their employers and offer opportunities for both independence and advancement. We want students with disabilities to be thinking of work after high school while still in high school (as non-disabled students are routinely encouraged and supported to do).

We want to break the cycle of isolation that impacts many people with disabilities, Clearly the workplace is one step, but so too is ensuring access to independent living situations and full participation in community activities: from recreation and fitness, to leisure, continuing education and cultural activities, to voting and participation in community leadership and governance.

We host and co-facilitate an active Self-Advocates group, Champlain Voices.

We outreach community groups and associations, as well as employers, to offer education and build the partnerships that break down the "service-delivery" model and build real connections for participation and achievement.

Our main strategy is full participation and partnership. The goals we seek can only be achieved in the broader community. Gaining full participation and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities is not an academic puzzle to be solved in our offices or at a group home. It's in real life: at work, at school, in the neighborhood or apartment building. And it's not 9-to-5, but 24/7.

Our Way2Work program is so successful, in part, because it meets employers where they are. "Hey, there's a labor shortage! Need good employees? Let's design a training program together that meets YOUR needs as well as ours!"

We encourage our consumers to get involved in the community as leaders. Two serve on our own Board of Directors. Other serve on boards or as community volunteers throughout our service area. Our self-advocates do workshops and TV shows. It's our belief that "everyone participates and everyone belongs." So, we push participation and that leads to belonging!

We participate as an organization: we are members of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR). We are part of the Vermont Care Partners collaborative, we are part of a Public Health Partnership that works with medical students at the University of Vermont Medical Center. We collaborate with Think College VT to help provide post-secondary education experiences to students with intellectual disabilities.

For us, community is where the action is, so we are involved, visible, and engaged.

Our supported employment program, Way2Work, has been named the top such program by the State of Vermont for eight consecutive years. (And that means a lot! Vermont's supported employment system itself was recognized internationally last year with a Zero Project Award for Innovation in Employment, awarded at the United Nations in Vienna, Austria). We've built the program and refine it continuously. We now offer a continuum of supports - unique in Vermont, and perhaps regionally or nationally) that offers employment support from high school to retirement age; from pre-vocational experiences and assessments, through transitional jobs and internships, to first jobs, to career development and advancement.

Our pre-vocational component, Bridging, offers high school students career exploration as well as community engagement and advocacy experiences in partnership with five Chittenden County high schools (though we expect this to expand to other counties). The program has gone to a whole new level since CCS took over its coordination three years ago (at the urging of our partner schools). School2Work works with school to career transitions for graduating students (or those "aging out" of high school)

We have created service delivery models that are setting standards for replication, we are financially stable, have an extremely strong network of community partners, and all five members of our Senior Management team have been with the agency for 12-plus years. Our management staff is engaged and veteran, our consumers have a store voice in our operation, and our direct support staff is deep and well-trained.
We are a known and respected community partner, twice named "Best Non-Profit" in the region by a business magazine.

CCS has been named the top supported employment program in the state for the past eight years. We have earned "National Best Practices" recognition through APSE: The Network on Employment. CCS was selected to train supported employment and vocational rehabilitation professionals throughout Vermont on supporting entrepreneurs with disabilities to launch micro-businesses. We have earned consistently high (90-plus percent) from employers and program participants.

Other agencies and community partners are contracting with CCS to enhance their employment programs (or even manage them), we are coordinating Bridging on behalf of Chittenden County high schools, have recently expanded our home and shared living supports to include Homeward, an independent alternative to assisted living or "nursing homes" for seniors or young adults with disabilities, and will soon host a site for Global Campus.

We've changed the face of employment in Vermont, together with our colleagues in the field and the Developmental Service system: for institutions, to "sheltered workshops" to fledgling supported employment initiatives, to a world leader in that field, while also providing self-employment and post-secondary education opportunities to People with intellectual disabilities.

What's next? How can even more naturally collaborative partnerships enhance our model of full inclusion and participation? For our consumers, and our community partners. Our goal must be to stay open to innovation, new partners, approaches, and models.