Community Life Engagement In Action

Social isolation has been identified by the U.S. Surgeon General as an epidemic with “devastating impact”. Isolation from community life is a particularly challenge for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The disability service system still all too often isolates and segregates rather than connecting people to their communities.

The goal of Community Life Engagement in Action (CLE in Action) is to transform and improve services in order to increase community life engagement (CLE) for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). We define CLE as access to and participation in the community as part of a meaningful day; related activities can include volunteer work, civic engagement, recreation, fitness, involvement in faith communities, and any other activities that people with and without disabilities participate in outside of their work lives.

CLE in Action's goal is to put into practice tools developed through a 20+ year line of research investigating how services for adults with IDD can better lead to community life engagement.

Major activities include:

1. Establishing a National Community of Practice on Community Life Engagement
2. Conducting a “lunch and learn” webinar series for service providers to learn from each other’s successes through storytelling
3. Fielding an e-newsletter using micro-learning strategies.

This work will be accomplished by a partnership between the Institute on Disability at UNH (IOD), the Institute for Community Inclusion at UMass Boston (ICI), and the American Network of Community Options and Resources (ANCOR), and guided by an advisory group that includes service providers, people with IDD, and other community life engagement experts.

Funding Statement: CLE in Action is funded by a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR grant number 90DPKT0011). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this website do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.