The Community of Practice for Supporting Families of Persons With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

It is important to continuously support families to improve the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their family members. Using a life course approach to address strengths and needs of families, a National Community of Practice, infused with the Charting the LifeCourse framework, focused on systems change to improve policy and practices to enhance the lives of families. A qualitative analysis used the Value Creation framework to evaluate both process and product outcomes of 16 state communities of practice as to changes in knowledge and practices. Results emphasize the relative effectiveness of aspects of policy and overarching practices designed to support people with disabilities and their families in participating states.