Community Life Engagement Community of Practice Implementation Guide

This implementation guide is a roadmap for organizations or collaboratives that want to start or support communities of practice (CoPs) that promote community life engagement (CLE) for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). 

What is community life engagement (CLE)?

CLE is access to and participation in the community as part of a meaningful day. Related activities can include volunteerism, 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. Notably, CLE is an outcome in anyone’s life, not a service for people with disabilities. Disability services can, however, play an important role in promoting CLE, especially for people with higher support needs.

What is a Community of Practice?

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people that shares a common interest or goal and comes together to share information, knowledge and ideas. It can be structured with regular meetings, shared resources, and open discussions where members share ideas, challenges, and solutions. A CoP can be led by one person or a small team, but the expectation is that everyone contributes by sharing their experiences and learning from others.

Why is a CoP an effective strategy? 

A CoP combines learning from experts with learning from peers and working on challenges together. This combination of activities leads to more active engagement than other training or support models. The national CoP on CLE brings in speakers from across the country while also collaborating on addressing the specific challenges faced by CoP members. 

What is involved in hosting a CoP? 

The CoP model described here takes place over the course of a year and requires ongoing commitment of time and effort by the hosting organization. 

To decide if your organization has the capacity to host a successful CoP on CLE, consider the following factors:

1. Resource availability. Hosting a CoP as described in this toolkit involves a substantial time commitment. The hosting team will need to meet 2-4 times a month and perform additional tasks in between meetings, for a total of 6-10 hours a month commitment by a team of 3-5 people, plus additional time at the start of the project to recruit participants and presenters and set up scheduling and other logistics.  The capacity to host online meetings via Zoom, Teams, or a similar platform is also essential. 
2. Content matter expertise. In order to select CoP membership, structure the sessions, identify appropriate didactic presenters, and guide conversations in a productive direction, at least one team member at the convening organization should have a strong understanding of the four guideposts for CLE and how they are implemented in real-world settings. Ideally this is someone with hands-on experience with CLE supports and/or to access to direct training or technical assistance on the CLE model.
3. Access to potential participants. The convening organization should have a network of service providers from which it can recruit CoP members. 

The convening organization itself could be a state agency, a university, a provider organization, a consulting group, an advocacy group, or any other organization that meets the above criteria and is committed and a commitment to advancing CLE for individuals with IDD. 

How to Host Your Own Community of Practice, Step by Step

Step 1: Recruit and Select Members 

The goal of your CoP is to connect organizations that are committed to increasing CLE for people with IDD with each other and with experts on CLE, to discuss issues and collaborate on solutions. We recommend the following steps to recruit members:

Develop a CoP Fact Sheet and Application Form.  Recruitment should begin with creating a fact sheet that explains all the important aspects of the CoP. This should include the purpose, expected time commitment, and expectations for members. Your fact sheet should highlight the benefits of joining the CoP. Finally, let people know how to apply, whether that is by emailing a designated contact or filling in an online form. See Appendix 1 for a sample fact sheet and Appendix 2 for a sample application form. 

Spread the word. As you look to identify CoP participants, use a broad array of outreach strategies. This could include accessing your own personal and professional networks; posting your flyer in relevant newsletters or webpages such as your State Developmental Disability Council, provider association, or developmental disability agency; and disseminating it more broadly using social media outlets. 

Select your participants. You may want to have a competitive, yet short, application process in which potential CoP members apply for membership and are chosen by a selection committee. The composition of the selection committee is up to you, but it should include a range of perspectives, including those with lived experience with disability. Criteria for selection could include any of the following:

• having a commitment to the vision of CLE at multiple levels of the organization, 
• having clear goals for how they will both use the CoP for support as well as contribute to it, and 
• having a plan for reaching underserved people. 
• confirmation that the organization commits to attending and participating in the year-long cohort 

For our national CoP, the process is as follows. The project team reviews all submitted applications for eligibility and completeness. All complete applications are sent to a small selection committee. Each committee member reviews each complete application and scores it using the scoring sheet in Appendix 3. The review committee then meets to review each organization’s score and reach consensus on its recommendations. In addition to the application scores, the group tries to select organizations with a varied set of perspectives, including different geographic regions; urban, suburban, and rural locations; and a range of populations served, including racial, ethnic, and income diversity.

Step 2: Plan Community of Practice Activities

The goal of your CoP is to connect service providers with other service providers and with subject matter experts, to enable shared learning, connection, and inspiration. For the national CoP, we adopted a proven framework called ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes; see sidebar for more information). We have found this model highly successful and would recommend it to any organization that has access to the necessary support resources via an ECHO Hub. If you do not have that access, you may choose an alternate meeting framework that serves similar purposes, using the meeting structure below as a guide.

Set a meeting structure

We suggest meeting once a month. Each meeting should be at least 60 minutes and include the following general components:

• 5 minutes: Welcomes and Introductions
• 20-25 minutes: Didactic or instructional presentation by project staff or another invited subject matter expert on a particular topic related to CLE. 
• 3-5 minutes: A CoP member shares a case scenario based on a problem the presenter is seeking to solve. This could be an individual scenario about a person the organization is supporting, or an organizational scenario focused on how to operationalize supports for CLE. (see Appendix 4 for sample case scenario questions). 
• 15-20 minutes: CoP participants and subject matter experts respond to the scenario by asking clarifying questions and then providing recommendations on how to solve or improve the individual or organizational scenario presented. 
• 5 minutes: Wrap-up and announcements

Decide on your topics and presenters. You will want to plan out your meetings in advance so you can invite speakers and organize case presentations. For speakers, look first to organizations in your state or region that have been successful in supporting CLE according to the definition and guideposts. If you are struggling to find local speakers, the CLE in Action team can recommend national subject matter experts to fill any gaps in content.  

The National CoP pays didactic presenters a $200 speaker fee for developing their presentation content, participating in a dry run meeting, presenting at the CoP meeting, and offering their expertise in the case discussion. 

Table 1 provides a suggested set of topics for each meeting, based on the topics covered by the national CoP. 

Table of Suggested Meeting Topics

Step 3: Host Initial Community of Practice Meetings

Prepare for each meeting in advance. Once you start meeting monthly, meetings will be happening in rapid sequence. To keep ahead of the schedule, we recommend having a meeting preparation timeline laid out in advance. Our team has adopted the following timeline: 

• 4+ weeks ahead: Confirm topical speaker and case presenter
• 1.5-2 weeks ahead: Gather all presentation materials including any PowerPoint slides and handouts from the didactic presenter and a written case summary from the case presenter
• 1 week ahead: send reminder email to participants with case summary for them to review 
• 3-5 days ahead: meet with speaker and case presenter for a dry run and review of the day’s play-by-play timeline and roles (see Appendix 5 for an example play-by-play spreadsheet). 

Host CoP meetings. Open the virtual meeting room at least 15 minutes in advance for the team, speaker, and case presenter to log on, do a sound check, and confirm any last-minute details. You may want to schedule a 15 minute debrief afterward to discuss any immediate lessons learned for next time. IF you are debriefing immediately after the meeting, have a plan for moving to a different meeting link or moving participants to the waiting room first.   

Evaluate the meeting. To collect meeting feedback, you can embed a brief post-meeting evaluation poll in Zoom and ask participants to complete it at the end of the meeting. We aim to finish the meeting 3-5 minutes early so we can leave the Zoom room open and collect this feedback before the end of the hour – this strategy has generated a better response rate than sending out an evaluation survey link after the meeting. See Appendix 6 for sample post-session evaluation poll questions. 

Follow up after each meeting. Follow up with CoP members by email within 7 days after the meeting. Let them know where to access any materials, including a recording of the instructional presentation, PowerPoint files or any other handouts or resources, notes on the recommendations that were provided by the group for the case scenario, and information about upcoming CoP meetings and any other related activities. 

Step 4: Evaluate your success

Evaluating your CoP activities is important to making sure they are helpful and effective.  You’ll want to evaluate both process and outcomes to help show what made your CoP successful, or what should be done differently next time. 

Some of the questions your evaluation activities could address are:

• How can you describe participants and their degree of engagement with your CoP (e.g., What types of organizations are represented within in your CoP? What kinds of staff members? How many individuals / organizations are regularly attending your CoP sessions?)
• Are CoP participants satisfied with their experiences in the CoP (overall and with individual sessions)?  Are their needs and expectations for the CoP being met?
• Are your goals and expectations being met, as facilitators of the CoP? What is working and what can be improved for this and future cohorts?
• What are participants learning from presenters and from their peers?
• Are participants making changes in how they support people with IDD? 
• Are participants gaining confidence in their ability to provide supports that led to CLE?
• Are they inspired to make changes in how they provide services?

Some of the ways you can answer these questions are: 

• Maintaining a spreadsheet or database of members and meeting attendance.
• Polling participants immediately following each meeting to get feedback on that meeting’s content and logistics including what the participants liked and did not like about the session and what they learned from a presenter or peer that they plan to use in their own work (see Step 3 and Appendix 6). 
• Collecting longer surveys at the start and end of the CoP, to assess changes in participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to CLE, any bigger picture plans they have to apply what they learned in the CoP, and demographic information about CoP members (such as information about individual’s roles at their organization; their years of experience in providing supports for CLE; and participant characteristics such as race, gender, and ethnicity). The community life engagement fidelity scale (see Appendix 7) is one possible tool to assess changes in individuals and organizational practices in providing supports for CLE before and after engagement in the CoP. See Appendix 8 for examples of pre- and post-CoP surveys. 

Step 5: Consider ways of maintaining longer-term engagement

Upon completing the initial sequence of meetings, each cohort will become part of the larger ongoing Community of Practice. We recommend having this group meet quarterly and share access to a dedicated communication space in between meetings. Depending on geography and resources, you may also want to consider in-person gathering options, either as a stand-alone event or in conjunction with another conference or meeting. National CoP members (including current cohort members and past cohort “alumni”) have an in-person meeting at the annual ANCOR conference. 

Ensuring Everyone Has a Voice in Your CoP

As you design and conduct your CoP activities, consider whether your community of practice is reflecting everyone in your region. Are there particular groups that are underserved or left out of the conversation? Do people with disabilities have a voice? Including a variety of viewpoints both enhances the conversation and ensures the CoP is meeting the needs of different groups or regions. Here are some specific strategies you could consider: 

• Consider diversity when selecting CoP members. Things you might take into consideration are urban, suburban, and rural locations, racial and ethnic diversity, income diversity, and representation from different subregions of your area. 
• Ask CoP members, when they apply, to describe any unique characteristics of the population they serve. 
• Seek out didactic presenters that have experience supporting underserved communities such as rural or low-income areas.
• Consider how to include people with disabilities in the conversation. Can they be didactic presenters? Can someone with IDD and/or a family member present their own case dilemma for the group to discuss? 
• Engage local or regional self-advocates as advisors to identify needs and issues particular to your state or region.
• Encourage and support leadership and direction by members of your CoP and any project advisors, especially people with disabilities.

Funding Acknowledgement

Community Life Engagement in Action is supported by the Administration for Community Living (ACL), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $1 million with 100 percent funding by ACL/HHS (grant # 90DPKT0011). The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACL/HHS, or the U.S. Government.