Building Community and Support for Individuals With Disabilities

Quality Trust for Individuals with Disabilities—a DC Bar Foundation grantee partner—is dedicated to being a force for change in the lives of people with developmental disabilities and their families, so they can succeed, thrive, and experience full membership in the community. Their values are rooted in people, family, and support, ensuring that individuals with disabilities have a sense of respect, belonging, value, and can shape their own lives.

In this Q&A with Keri Flora, senior attorney at Quality Trust for Individuals with Disabilities, she shares insights about the work her organization is doing to support clients and families.

Quality Trust works across both individual advocacy and systems monitoring. Based on what you’re seeing this year, where are people with developmental disabilities still encountering the biggest gaps in DC’s service system?

The biggest gaps involve inadequate support around health and wellness due to poor coordination, communication, and documentation. Retention of Direct Support Professionals within the DC Developmental Disability Services system is very low, resulting in vital information being lost among the many staff changes.  Another concern is the lack of meaningful day programming for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities (IDD).

What patterns are you seeing in the legal questions families and self-advocates bring to you, and how are those trends shaping your broader advocacy work? 

We continue to see a lack of education around alternatives to guardianship within the school and court systems. Schools and courts often jump straight to the “need” for guardianship without meaningfully exploring whether alternatives, such as Supported Decision-Making (SDM), are a viable option. We are beginning to see guardianship petitions denied based on the person’s ability to use SDM, and we are hopeful this will become a more consistent trend. We aim to continue advocating for and educating about alternatives and why they should be considered before turning to guardianship and stripping someone of their decision-making rights.

The program Family Ties of DC showcases the profound impact of parent-to-parent connections. Why is building a community among caregivers so vital for strengthening advocacy and confidence?

It’s vital that caregivers and parents can meaningfully connect with people who have gone through similar experiences, so they feel less alone and isolated. These connections allow caregivers and parents to share information, resources, and strategies, creating stronger, more confident community advocates. Working with these caregivers and parents also allows for our advocacy to be more informed about the issues this community faces.

#ProjectPeerToo bridges trauma-informed peer education with policy and systems-level change for survivors with intellectual and developmental disabilities. What have you learned about connecting community-based peer support with formal advocacy pathways, and how is that influencing your next phase of the project?

We have learned a lot about the intersectionality of disability and sexual violence with gender, race, ethnicity, and the LGBTQ+ community. We are looking forward to being able to educate people with IDD about available services and support, and to prevent sexual violence from occurring in the first place. We also look forward to educating organizations that provide services and resources, so they are better equipped to support people of all abilities and identities.

Based on your current projects, recent achievements, and the needs of families and self-advocates, what are you most excited to build next, or what are the organization’s priorities in the year ahead? 

With all the cuts and decreases in revenue, our priorities are to maintain the current level of support and services available to people with IDD and to ensure no services or supports are lost.