As states focus on expanding integrated employment opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and phase out sheltered work, they are finding a need to concurrently examine day services and supports that promote Community Life Engagement (CLE, see yellow box to the right for a detailed definition). These supports can be a wrap-around to ensure individuals’ engagement in the community is maintained and they continue to receive sufficient levels of support, despite fluctuations in job status and hours. From January through June 2017, the State Employment Leadership Network (SELN) hosted a working group of member states to share strategies for encouraging quality day services and supports that promote CLE. The SELN is a membership-based network of state IDD agencies committed to making changes in their service systems to ensure access to competitive integrated employment for the people they serve.
This CLE Working Group (CLEWG) was comprised of 17 SELN state administrators and met five times. The first four meetings focused on the four guideposts for providing high-quality day services and supports to promote CLE. Themes from those discussions can be found in Engage Brief No. 8.
