Community Living Out Loud

Empowering Independence: Exploring Community Living Mississauga's New Initiatives

• Community Living Mississauga • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Independence: the ability to live life without undue influence, make personal decisions, and even make mistakes. This is a fundamental right for everyone, including those with intellectual disabilities.

In this episode of Community Living Out Loud. Host Peter Reynolds is joined by Diana Lopez and Lorraine Montgomery of Community Living Mississauga to discuss the importance of independence for individuals with intellectual disabilities and explore two new innovative programs: Choices for Inclusive Living and Living the Dream.

If you'd like more information on either of these programs or any other services Community Living Mississauga provides, please contact: 

Community Living Mississauga (Head office)
(905) 542-2694

Choices for Independent Living
Lorraine Montgomery lorrainemo@clmiss.ca

Living the Dream
Diana Lopez: dianalo@clmiss.ca

You can also watch this episode on YouTube
https://youtu.be/_LSiybwxSI8

If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to subscribe. We'd also love to hear any episode suggestions you may have.



PETER REYNOLDS
Welcome to Community Living Out Loud, brought to you by Community Living Mississauga. I'm your host, Peter Reynolds. On this podcast, we celebrate the lives of people who have an intellectual disability and the incredible work being done to advocate for them and their families. Through conversations with experts, advocates, and people with lived experiences, we hope to inspire and educate listeners on the importance of building strong, supportive communities. Let's get loud. Independence. The ability to live your life without being influenced by other people, to make your own decisions, even your own mistakes. It's something that everyone deserves, and it's the driving force behind Community Living Mississauga's residential support programs. In today's episode, we'll be discussing a newly launched program at Community Living Mississauga called Choices for Inclusive Living. We'll also take a closer look at another forward-thinking initiative, Living the Dream, and how it helps support people who have more independent living opportunities. Joining us to provide insight into these two programs, including their evolution, integration with existing services, are Lorraine Montgomery, Community Living Support Manager, and Diana Lopez, Manager of Individualized Planning and Supports. Lorraine, Diana, welcome to Community Living Out Loud.


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
Thank you

DIANA LOPEZ
Thank you for having us.


PETER REYNOLDS
Lorraine, I'm wondering to start, if we could just touch briefly on the concept of independent living. What is it and why it's important to the people you support?


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
It's very important to the people that we support. Historically within this sector there have been two avenues of residential supports, that being supported independent living and 24-hour supports. Not all people fit into that mold to each of those programs, so a new program needed to be created to meet the needs of the people that we support, where they have choice, independence, and flexibility. This is in line with the Journey to Belongings document that the ministry has just recently put out.


PETER REYNOLDS
So more broadly, why is it important that the people you support be able to make their own decisions? Diana, perhaps you could tackle that one.


DIANA LOPEZ
Well, it just falls in line with Community Living Mississauga's vision and mission. And we really want to support people to live their best lives. Um, and it's something that we all want, right? We all want our independence. We all want to live independently. Um, and with living independently, making choices, um, comes that self-determination and, you know, happiness to life. So, yeah.


PETER REYNOLDS
And even making your own mistakes, Lorraine.


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
Definitely. People are the experts on their lives. They know what direction that they want to take within their lives. We are just here to guide them along in their journey.


PETER REYNOLDS
So speaking of guiding them along in their journey, I think we can segue to talking about this new program, Choices for Inclusive Living, which is outside of your existing supported independent living and 24 hour group living. Lorraine, I understand that you're the pioneer of this initiative. Can you talk a little bit about it and how it came to be developed?


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
After doing a survey of our current services that we provide at Community Living Mississauga, we were able to identify that there were a large amount of people who did not fit into the formulas of 24-hour support and supported independent living. Supported independent living is between 5 and 15 hours of support per week, whereas 24-hour support is 24 hours of support per day. However, there are a large population of people who are within the middle of that spectrum, who need more than 5 to 15 hours a week, but less than 24 hours. So this program is being explored to meet the need of those people. In addition to that, we have people who are living in supported independent living, who are aging. Their support needs will change as they age, needing more support. Alternatively, we support people who are in our 24-hour programs, but as they learn new skills and create more independence for themselves, they may not need the support 24 hours a day. So this program was created to individualize each of their supports so that they're getting the amount of support that they need, not a calculation by the ministry.


PETER
And is this new program currently funded?


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
This program is not funded currently. Currently, we are making do with what we have to support people in this program. However, we are optimistic that in the future it will be a funded program.


PETER
And that's interesting. One would think it might even out because the people that need less support, less than 24 hours, that it might be less expensive, require less funding. And the people that need a little more support as they age would be able to benefit from that extra funding and support. So you'd think it might even out.


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
I definitely agree with you. And. We are optimistic that we will be able to demonstrate to the ministry that moving forward so that long term it could be a funded program.


PETER REYNOLDS
Now, I know you described how it's in the middle. Are there any other differences in this program to your current residential support programs?


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
There are not a lot of differences to be true. We're still there to meaningfully enhance the lives of the people that we support, to support them in their activities of daily living. We are just there based on what they feel they need for supports, what they have identified as their needs are for how many hours that we are there to support them.


PETER REYNOLDS
And ultimately, how will this integrate into your current programs, providing more choice for the people you support?


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
Well, we are very optimistic that this is a segue to the other programs. As people age, they may be able to move from one program to the other as their needs increase. Or as their needs decrease, they might be able to move to supported independent living so that it becomes a continuum of support, not a pigeonhole support for that person's life.


PETER REYNOLDS
So that sounds like the conversation is ongoing once they're in a particular program, that's not the end of the story. It's a constant conversation as to where they are and where they need to be. Definitely. And where they want to be, I should say.


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
That is key where they want to be. Not all people want to live in a home with three other people. Some people can only successfully live by themselves. It's too much stimulation to have other people around with them all the time. So they need that seclusion in their own apartment in order to be successful in the community.


PETER REYNOLDS
Diana, I wanted to talk a little bit about Living the Dream, which is another initiative that's supporting people to find more independent living opportunities in the community. What makes this program different than Choices for Inclusive Living?


DIANA LOPEZ
Well, at Community Living Mississauga, we're always challenging ourselves on what we can do differently that will assist people and their families in a meaningful way. The traditional resources, as we know today, do not come close to meeting the needs and desires of the people and their families. So when planning for the future, this rings true with affordable housing, as well as supports. And we found that people and their families were unable to move forward with implementing their life plan. And we knew that we needed to address that somehow. People want to move forward with their lives. They want to branch out on their own. They want to live independently. And families have shared with us that they don't know what else to do or where to turn. So we often. We often heard the question and felt the question, what's going to happen to our loved ones when we're no longer around? And this is a question that we hear repeatedly that keeps families up at night. So we created Living the Dream out of a need that we heard from the people we support as well as families. And this is a service that is in demand. We first launched this initiative to support people and their families to move forward with implementing the future plans, specifically during their transition of moving out of their family home and into their own home. So through the planning process, Living the Dream partners with project participants and their families to further explore their vision for their future, providing support to make their vision a reality. Living the Dream really empowers participants to build their capacity, gain new skills, and it also provides support to reduce barriers and ensures that all people are given the opportunity to create a life, to create and live a self-managed life. So through Living the Dream, we partner with people to achieve their goal of moving out of their family home. And they have access to our support for approximately one year. We have also extended this time period. For example, somebody we supported through Living the Dream was looking to purchase a condo in a certain area of Mississauga. And it took quite a while to actually purchase the unit. And we were able to extend the program by an additional six months so that they can implement all the goals all the goals they accomplished, all the skills they strengthened in their actual home.


PETER REYNOLDS
So Diana, just to be clear, how does, uh, the program and the existing services differ now that you have Living the Dream? So for example, in the past, somebody wants to move out of their family home. They would be streamed into either sort of 24 hour residential supports or independent living supports if they had their own home or their own apartment. So how does it differ now with the Living the Dream program?


DIANA LOPEZ
So with Living the Dream, we partner with participants who are ready and willing to move within a year. And we meet, we have a 12 month kind of plan set out for the year. We meet with them weekly and we set goals and actions to help support people to increase their independent skills, to prepare them to move out on their own. We also support people to get on the wait list for affordable housing. And then we hopefully partner up with them within that one year mark before they're actually ready to move out so that they're successful in making their place their own. We support with maybe augmenting support through assistive technology. assistive devices, apps that can help support people to build their independence a bit more without relying as heavily on direct paid support.


PETER REYNOLDS
Fantastic. Fantastic. So instead of they are in their in their home living independently and you're providing support to them, you're actually preparing them to live independently with the skills that they need.


DIANA LOPEZ
Absolutely.


PETER REYNOLDS
Fantastic. Fantastic. Um, so we talked about, uh, I want to talk about a little bit about, you mentioned partnering with the people that, uh, that you're supporting and their families. Can you talk a little bit more about that relationship with the family in this program?


DIANA LOPEZ
Yep. So that term walking alongside became very important to us through the creation of Living the Dream because it perfectly describes the support that we offer. We are literally walking alongside people and their families as they transition into this next exciting stage of their lives. It is an empowering partnership and it's a strong pillar of the structure of the Living the Dream program. And really the power is within that partnership that Community Living Mississauga has with the person and their family. And while it is required that the person and their family be actively working toward their goal of setting up a living arrangement, the value of the support received from Community Living Mississauga during this process has been evident. And it's through this walking alongside the person and their family, where we provide support through access to information, guidance, education and suggestions. And we walk alongside the participant during this pivotal transition time.


PETER REYNOLDS
Can you tell me a little bit about how many people have participated or do you have a story that you can share?


DIANA LOPEZ
So we've had over a dozen people already participate in Living the Dream. And I want to share the story of our first participant. Her name is Sassy. And she, at the time, she was living in her parents' home with her parents. Her parents actually played an instrumental role in her future plan because when she was young, they purchased the home and they rented out the home thinking that, you know, when she was ready to move out, that they would get rid of the renters, renovate the place, and then Sassy would have her own place to live independently. So they had that plan already in the works. And her mother, Nianna, joined one of our family that focuses on future planning. And that's where she learned about living the dream. And she thought it would be amazing if we could partner with them to support Sassy to move out into her own home. And the rest is history. So Sassy renovated her place. We supported her to look for a roommate, get a roommate contract done, find out what she actually wanted in a roommate. Um, it didn't really work out in the end. Uh, Sassy, she learned that she didn't want a roommate, that she was happy living on her own. And her, uh, the roommate, um, also realized that she wasn't ready to move out on her own. So it all worked out, lots of learning on both parties. Um, and instead Sassy and her family transformed the basement into, um, a separate unit that they could rent out. And this family pays a discounted rent in exchange for a type of supportive roommate option. So they have a contract where once a week this family has dinner with Sassy. Sometimes Sassy hosts upstairs in her place. Sometimes they host downstairs. And once a month usually they plan something to do out together. And at least they're watching each other. If, you know, roommates need anything, they're kind of there rather than that complete divide where they're just renting the basement apartment and then you don't see each other. So that's worked out well.


PETER REYNOLDS
Sounds fantastic. I mean, you have the trifecta, you have independence, support, and integration with the community in the, in that situation.


DIANA LOPEZ
Yeah. And Sassy's just really proud of like maintaining and landscaping her garden. She's really proud of keeping her place clean, um, remodeling as she enjoys, uh, to do so. And, um, She knows her neighbors, her neighbors know her. And we've supported her to incorporate certain technological devices to help her feel safe in her home. So, for example, a doorbell camera helps her feel more confident that, you know, if she doesn't want to enter the door, she can see who's there first before reaching out. Using an app to order her groceries and things like that.


PETER REYNOLDS
Fantastic. Where do you see this program going? What's the future for it?


DIANA LOPEZ
My hopes are that the ministry throws funding our way so that we can really grow the program and support more people. And hopefully there will be more access to affordable housing and resources for people so that they have the means, they have access to the means of moving out of their family home and living on their own. Because as we've seen, many families we support are aging and families are a lot smaller these days. So it's difficult for people planning for the future.


PETER REYNOLDS
I'm just wondering for people watching this, particularly parents, it has to be scary. This idea of having somebody, uh, your child going off on their own in any situation is scary, but if they, if they have an intellectual disability, um, and they need particular, uh, amount of support, that can be even scarier. And I'm wondering, um, how you address that with parents or, or what's been, been your experience. Lorraine, could you talk a little bit about that?


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
Well, unfortunately at this time, really the amount of support that is offered to a person is dictated by Developmental Services Ontario and how much funding a person receives and then which category of funding they fit on based on those numbers. With both Diana's program and my programming, As we said, we are optimistic and hopeful that the ministry will be financially supporting our programs because they are in alignment with the Journeys to Belonging document that the ministry has just put out. But it is scary for every parent because you have kept them safe and now you need to let them go. And depending on how much support they're receiving, they may be alone by themselves sometimes. And that's why it is our goal to increase their independence, to teach them the skills that they need so both the person supported and the families feel comfort in knowing that they have those skills.


PETER REYNOLDS
Diana, anything to add?


DIANA LOPEZ
I just wanted to add one thing that has been very successful has been the introduction of creating a circle of friends. So we meet with this kind of helps parents and family members let go a little bit. where we bring everyone in that is close to the person. We let the person dictate how they want to meet with everyone on a monthly or quarterly basis. And then we take a look at each individual relationship that that person has with the person and what they can and a takeover moving forward. So for example, someone we supported, they have an aunt, actually a family friend who is great at cooking. And so during one of these meetings, one of these meetings, they were just watching a hockey game together, like the whole circle of friends network. And this person said that she'd be open to kind of supporting the person to host a dinner party and to start creating a cookbook. And so she started working with this person on that. And it's something that, you know, his parents, you know, weren't kind of supporting him with. And it was an easy transition. And yeah, so I find the creating a circle of friends. Supporting families to reach out to any connections that they do have goes a long way with kind of easing their worry.


PETER REYNOLDS
Well, we've covered quite a lot in the podcast so far. Lorraine, anything you'd like to add before we say goodbye?


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
Really, my hopes and dreams for this program, I've worked in the sector for quite some time, and it's really evident that people don't fit into circles. Square pegs don't fit into circles. So we need to be innovative. We need to have individualized programs to meet the needs of the people that we support. And I think we've been successful so far, but there's much more that we can do moving forward as an agency.


PETER REYNOLDS
Diane, any final thoughts?


DIANA LOPEZ
It's an exciting time, as scary as it can be that our traditionally funded resources have been exhausted. It is fun to meet with families and collaboratively think outside of the box and brainstorm ways that they can support their family member to live independently so that families feel at ease that when they're no longer around, their family member is happy living their best life.


PETER REYNOLDS
Fantastic. Lorraine, so for those people watching who are interested in either of these programs, how can they get more information?


LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
We can both be reached at Community Living Mississauga's head office at 905-542-2694. Alternatively, I can be reached by email at lorrainemo at clmiss.ca.


PETER
And Diana, do you have an email as well?


DIANA LOPEZ
I can be reached at diana, d-i-a-n-a-l-o at clmiss.ca.


PETER REYNOLDS
Fantastic. Lorraine, Diana, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. I think we all learned a lot about how critical it is to constantly innovate and seek new solutions to empower people who have an intellectual disability, ensuring they lead full, meaningful, independent lives. Thank you so much again for joining us.


DIANA LOPEZ
Thank you. 

LORRAINE MONTGOMERY
Thank you.


PETER REYNOLDS
And as always, thank you to our audience. Your continued support is very much appreciated. And don't forget, whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast app, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. We want to hear what you think. So for Lorraine, Diana, and everyone here at Community Living Mississauga, I'm Peter Reynolds. You've been listening to Community Out Loud, or Community Living Out Loud, I should say. And until next time, stay loud.



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