Faculty of Education graduates Julie Kingstone, Keenan Wellar and Fran Childs are playing a leadership role in an innovative pilot project to help young adults with developmental disabilities gain more control over their lives.
The project, called On Our Own Together II, builds on the success of a smaller experiment which was conducted last year in partnership with professor Raymond Leblanc and the University’s Centre for Research on Community Services.
This initial project provided an opportunity for young adults with intellectual disabilities to find out if they could spend a month living away from their parents, relying on support from staff and peers. Ten participants spent 30 days living at Carleton University’s Leeds Residence.
As part of On Our Own Together II,which will run this spring, 15 young adults with intellectual disabilities will spend 50 nights in residence at Carleton.
The project, funded with a $40,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, is coordinated by LiveWorkPlay, an Ottawa-based charitable organization that serves young adults with mild intellectual disabilities.
“Historically, housing options for people with intellectual disabilities have been limited mainly to group homes, which offer a 24-hour staffing model, limited self-determination, and few opportunities for growth,” says LiveWorkPlay co-founder Julie Kingstone, who received her master’s degree in education from the University of Ottawa in 2002.
“On Our Own Together II seeks to showcase a functional housing model that features peer support, interdependence, and community,” she said.
LiveWorkPlay hopes to use what it learns from the project to eventually establish a permanent housing facility.
“We learned a lot last summer, but we really just scratched the surface in terms of shedding light on the needs and abilities of the participants,” says the CEO and co-founder of LiveWorkPlay, Keenan Wellar, who holds two bachelor’s degrees from the University. “This spring we are going to promote a more collegial atmosphere and focus on self-reliance.”
