My name is Tia, I work as a consultant for Inclusion International on Listen Include Respect.

Tia and Genevieve at the ANCOR conference

Listen Include Respect is a set of guidelines and tools for organizations on inclusive participation created by the members of Inclusion International and Down Syndrome International. They help organizations of all types to be more inclusive of people with intellectual disabilities. The guidelines include practical advice and checklists to follow.

I led the presentation at the conference alongside Genevieve and Leah from Keystone Human Services. The ANCOR conference is for people and organizations who deliver support services in the USA.

During the presentation we talked about how we are working together on a project to help Keystone Human Services work to help make their organization more inclusive of people with Intellectual Disabilities.

The project is about how a service provider organization can put the Listen, Include Respect guidelines into practice to help make sure self-advocates and people getting services are part of decision making in organizations like Keystone Human Services. The project is also about making sure that direct support professionals have the information and opportunity to develop their understanding of the rights of people with intellectual disabilities so that they can see how important they are as enablers of inclusion.

Project Vision Statement: In partnership with self-advocates, we continue to develop our knowledge and understanding of rights. Support Professionals at Keystone Human Services are recognized as advocates and enablers of inclusion. People accepting supports from Keystone Human Services are listened to, included, and their rights are respected.

Keystone Listen Include Respect Working Group

In our presentation we talked about how Keystone Human Services are setting up inclusive teams of self-advocates and direct support professionals and their managers. The teams work together and support each other to understand and work on the guidelines.

Genevieve from Keystone presenting at our session

We talked about where Keystone Human Services are now, the goals they have and the barriers they have faced as a big organization trying to do this work. We talked about what the working group has leant and how they support each other to not give up when it gets tough.

Click here for our presentation

The room was full and people asked questions. Hopefully in the future many more service provider organizations will be interested in using Listen Include Respect guidelines and do similar work.

If you would like to learn more about Listen Include Respect go to the website – ListenIncludeRespect.com

Keystone Human Services will be holding an event in June to talk about this work, find out more at this link.