1. Community Living Summit
Building Community Capacity for Full Participation at the Resource Center for Independent Living (RCIL)
Adam Burnett
Community Living Summit
Sept , 2016
Alexandria, Virginia

2. CIL Background
RCIL serves mainly rural areas in 15 Core Service Counties
Widespread area of 11,821 square miles
Percent adult noninstitutionalized population with independent living difficulty ranges from 3 % to 10% per service county
Small but steady increases in each county of adults with independent living difficulty from 2012 to 2014
Percent adult population with independent living difficulty ranges from 3 % to 10% per service county

3. Study Findings - Qualitative
Friends Groups extended the capacity to advocate within each community for specific needs
El Dorado, Emporia, Eureka, Ft. Scott, Iola, Osage City, Paola
Most held voter registration booths to distribute applications and advanced ballot voting information
Several groups addressed accessibility and usability of public places
City Hall, library, restaurants (large print and braille menus)
Street lighting, fuel pump assistance, increasing stoplight crosswalk timers for safety
Examples of community changes by RCIL

4. Study Findings - Qualitative (cont.)
Building awareness through connecting with the community, especially celebrating ADA Anniversary
RCIL reached new populations through school presentations on disability awareness, and awareness events in the community
Many new support groups, trainings and classes, and programs to offer new services to consumers
Examples of community changes by RCIL

5. Resource Center for Independent Living (RCIL) Community Changes
The graph that Glen showed earlier was data across all 9 CILs. This graph is for my CIL, RCIL, and shows changes in programs, policies, and practices.
These represent significant time and effort by people with disabilities to bring about changes in their communities.
Highlight some of the events that affected RCIL’s ability to bring about community changes

6. Study Findings – Resource Center for Independent Living (RCIL)
This is a circle graph of the Community Changes for RCIL, color-coded by the goal area addressed by the activity. The top graph shows that we focused on a few goal areas in the 12 months before curriculum training, and the second graph shows that the variety of goal areas increased in the 32 months after curriculum training. The average rate of community change was 0.5 changes/month before training, and the average rate of community change was 0.94 changes/month after training, which means there were more changes after training even when the different lengths of time are taken into consideration.

7. Challenges
High caseloads compete with expanding services or developing new programs
Time is spent putting out fires for clients
Loss of Targeted Case Managers to Managed Care, assumption Center no longer existed
Loss of grant funds
Loss of staff
Changes in leadership (executive director)
“Extremely high caseload[s] [don’t] leave a lot of time for expanding services or developing new programs; it’s just helping people who come through the door.”
“Time is spent putting out fires for clients. The caseloads don’t allow them to engage in changing community conditions.”
“Since we lost Targeted Case Managers to Managed Care (3 years ago), and since TCMs were doing core service work, we’ve had to really pick and choose what we do.”
“Lost 20 percent of grant funds. Went from seventy-some staff to thirty-some staff.”

8. Positives Outcomes Increased the number of community changes
Increased the variety of goal areas
Use of the Community Tool Box increased Friends Groups’ capacity to make community changes
Community and government organizations were more receptive to helping make community changes
Quotes about how CCB was used, and what made community changes easier or more difficult to implement
Add quotes for Adam to consider and or revise?

9. Reflections