Supporting Families to Strengthen the Futures of their Children or Youth with Developmental Disabilities

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A Meaningful Life: Families are strong. Every family has the capacity to  develop and pursue a meaningful life for their child or youth with a developmental disability. Sometimes, they need help to uncover or strengthen that capacity.

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Partnership with Families: We believe in the power of partnership with families and offer information, perspective and connections  to help equip families to support their child or youth in building a meaningful life.

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Families are the Decision-Makers: Families typically offer the longest-lasting, most committed relationships in all of our lives. We respect the family members (which includes the young person with developmental disabilities) as the primary decision-makers in this partnership.   At every step, we work to ensure families feel heard, respected, and valued.

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Family-to-family connections can promote important learning, motivation, support and courage.  These connections happen through the sharing of family stories, invitations to meaningful conversations, discussion groups, shared workshops, brainstorming & problem-solving meetings, and more.

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Listen: When families feel supported and their immediate needs are addressed, they can more fully focus on what matters most: helping their child thrive. Even when EAF isn’t able to provide direct help for difficult situations, we continue to show up and listen.

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Creating Pathways to the Good Things in Life - Alongside Families

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The Good Things of Life: The good things in life such as belonging, purpose, relationships, and community participation should be within everyone’s reach.

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Vision: Creating pathways to the good things of life starts with a strong vision rooted in ordinary family, neighbourhood and community life.

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Valued social roles open doors to the good things of life.

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Unpaid Relationships: At the heart of a good life are natural, unpaid relationships such as those with family, friends, neighbours, and community connections. These relationships bring joy, belonging, rootedness and increased safety.

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Understanding a child or youth deeply— their hopes, strengths, interests, family  and neighbourhood contexts —is the foundation for creating meaningful opportunities for their  participation in ordinary community life.

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One Person at a Time: Planning for these things works best when it's done one person at a time.

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Life Domains:  Valued social roles in all life domains (school, work, leisure, home, faith community, etc.) are important.  If a valued social role is not available in one domain of life, we continue to foster them in the other life domains.         

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