June 25th, 2025
Beyond the Portable
By: Community Participation Supports and the WALES Group Team
Within the WALES Group:
While the commitment to community participation has always been a cornerstone of the WALES mission, it has flourished in the aftermath of COVID, with members and staff creatively working from libraries, community centres, and cafes all across the region, as an additional means of fostering and interacting with the larger community, no longer viewing the physical building as a necessity for cultivating community ties.
Check out the stories below to read about what some of our WALES Group members have been up to over the past year!
| Amanda’s Perseverance | Essence of Andy | Jason’s Collab and Reconnect |
| Matt’s Coffee & Games Club at Stanley Park Community Association | Michael’s Mashup | Yancy’s Year of Yes’s |
Within EAFWR:
Historically, WALES has long been associated with the blue portable in the EAFWR parking lot, where you can find planning meetings, goal work, and people coming to and from the building following their unique schedules and engaging in their communities. WALES has evolved into Community Participation Supports (CPS), with a redefined focus on community engagement and participation.
The building now acts as a spring-board for members to use as a touch-point between classes, groups, and work spaces throughout KW. The WALES building also frequently welcomes EAFWR staff as an additional (and more lively) space to work and hold meetings in, and provides a work and social space for Passport users and their DSPs, as well as a space to gather for external groups from the community.
WALES has also recognized that there are other important groups of folks to connect with and support, beyond its members; the caregivers of the members, as well as transitional-aged youth departing high school. Currently, we are gearing up to launch a Caregiver Group, where families and home staff of WALES members can come together for peer support, connect with the team around questions or new ideas, and have guest speakers who offer information relevant to their life stage.
Within Waterloo Region: The Belonging Collective
WALES has long been known for its desire and successes in developing relationships with neighbours, community members, and groups within Waterloo Region. Over the past year, this has extended into fostering deep, collaborative relationships with people at other developmental service agencies including KW Habilitation. This began as an “On The Table” conversation invitation, where the WALES team attended a session hosted by KW Hab, and, from that, the two groups expressed an eager interest in remaining connected, finding ways to collaborate, learning more about what each other does, and sharing resources and ideas!
From here, representatives from both agencies took the steps to connect with the Tamarack Institute to pursue a grant to host a Collective Impact summit – including other developmental service agencies, self-advocates, and family-advocates, community centres, regional counselors, and Developmental Services Ontario – in an effort to address some collective challenges faced in implementing the Journey to Belonging initiatives, as well as the shared experience of limited resources, and increasing support needs we are all attempting to meet. Facilitated by Heather Keam, Amy Haynes, and Chantelle Mann, the session was successful in fostering explicit collaboration rather than competition between agencies, which saw self-advocates and family-advocates sharing relief and appreciation. Invitees who indicated an interest in carrying the work forward have since created The Belonging Collective, and are continuing to meet and lay plans for further resource-sharing, collaborative information-sharing sessions, and the potential for future town halls to keep us all engaged, networking, and serving our community together.
Through members’ interest in trying different programs and hitting some barriers, we reached out to program coordinators and inclusion supports services to collaborate on a better way forward for people accessing services. We made allies who are like-minded and share the same values as Extend-A-Family, which will help to create better service in the community.
Beyond:
The Operational Leadership Training (part of Ontario’s Developmental Services Workforce Initiative) is something that several Extend-A-Family Waterloo Region staff have participated in. Alongside KW Habilitation, with the help of Holly Duff and the RealXChange, EAFWR is now co-facilitating a monthly Community of Practice (CoP) for Operational Leaders across Ontario. The cohort has covered topics such as Time Management, Recruitment Needs, Financial Literacy, Supervising Large Teams, and Navigating our Work Using AI.
The CoP has been enriching for participants and facilitators alike, with resources, anecdotes, advice, and support being freely and frequently shared. As we all navigate changes regionally, provincially, nationally, and globally, it’s a refreshing, vibrant space that fosters collaboration as well as optimism. We are very excited to see where the next year takes us!