Resources

 

 

Strategies & Tip Sheets

 

Community Engagement Planning Tool

This tool is designed for parents, self-advocates and director support staff. It is used to create a community engagement plan for a person with a disabilities.

Tips on Getting Involved in the Community 

This fact sheet overviews the important steps involved in helping a person or child to get involved in community based activities. It reviews the 4-step process of community engagement.

Evaluating Community Venues

Supporting people to connect with others in the community begins with finding the right venue. This tip sheet offers suggestions on how to find places in the community that offer the best opportunity to build social capital.

The Connector    The Researcher    The Maintainer

There are many different roles that staff, family and friends can play in the community building process. These type sheets focus on describing three of the most important roles. These roles include the CONNECTOR, RESEARCHER, and MAINTAINER

Community Membership Scale

This tool helps staff and family identify inclusive opportunities in the community. 


Books

Social Capital: The Key to Macro Change

  • Shifting from the “micro” model found in so many policies and procedures that approach the person with a physical, mental, or emotional disability as “the problem,” this new book on social capital by Condeluci and Fromknecht offers a “macro” approach for human services in the community and for people with disabilities. By helping people find their commonality, disabilities matter less. This is an essential book for any provider or organization involved in clinical care, residential services, and support services. It will challenge readers to self-examine their policies and program models and recognize that we are all interdependent.


Websites

AlCondeluci.com

  • Al Condeluci has been an advocate, a catalyst for building community capacities, and a leader in understanding social culture since 1970. His website has a large collection of writings on community issues and social capital.

 

Saguaro Seminar

  • The Saguaro Seminar's mission is both to quantify the measurement of social capital and disseminate  the availability of social capital data. Their aim is to undertake an empirical analysis of how to build social capital in a number of settings including diverse communities, the workplace, and communities of faith, particularly amidst groups facing greater social and civic inequality.


Al Condeluci, Ph.D. has been an advocate, a catalyst for building community capacities, and leader in understanding social culture since 1970. He is the CEO of Community Living and Support Services (CLASS), a community based support system for folks with all types of disabilities in Pittsburgh, PA.