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New Frontline Initiative: DSPs Respond to Crisis
Direct support professionals (DSPs) have been through a lot this past year. Through a global pandemic, natural disasters, social unrest, and personal distress, they’ve stepped up as they always do. This issue of Frontline Initiative includes stories of great DSPs doing great work, supporting people in crisis, resources, strategies to advance professional practice, and preparing for and preventing crises when possible.
Frontline Initiative is jointly published by the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP) and ICI's Research and Training Center on Community Living (RTC-CL). Read more.
Community living: A 30-year story
A newly published book tells the 30-year story of how people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (ID/DD) have lived, worked, and received support services as the United States transitioned away from institutional care.
The 51-page book, 30 Years of Community Living for Individuals with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities (1987-2017), was produced by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration (ICI) for the Administration for Community Living (ACL). Using accessible language, it weaves the latest reports from three longitudinal data projects of national significance with real-life, personal accounts by people with ID/DD to inform policymakers, legislators, and others. The release coincides this month with the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“This book is a different way to present research. I hope it will attract a wide audience and become apparent that people with disabilities have the same dreams and desires that the rest of Americans do,” Katherine Cargill-Willis, a program specialist for the ACL, who also is a person with disabilities, shares in a forthcoming video presentation about the project. Read more.
Art Opening: cliffs are poet(z)
ICI’s Art for All: The Stephanie Evelo Program for Art Inclusion opens its largest exhibit to date on July 15, featuring the work of eight diverse artists with disabilities in the Northrup King Building in northeast Minneapolis.
The show title and theme, cliffs are poet(z), are an homage to Cliff Poetz, Art for All’s longest-serving advisory committee member and a nationally recognized disability activist who died in March. The title refers to a quote by the Scottish writer George Mackay Brown that likens the natural world to the art of poetry.
“There is a line of Brown’s that says ‘cliffs are poets,’ and his poetry is about the changing of the seasons and the journey someone goes on to travel through those seasons,” said Nik Fernholz, program manager for Art for All. Read more.
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