Finance Committee Agenda and Packet 2018 11 19

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amplification of their voice is needed they know advocates are available. Advocating for yourself while navigating large systems can be very intimidating for anyone. The support we give ripples out into the community when a person gains the confidence to advocate for themselves. People who may have previously found doors closed, access denied and barriers to their inclusion, instead will find doors in our community opened as the result of the ripple effect from self - advocates who came before them. The knowledge and trust that advocacy builds opens doors. These are our community's doors, the doors we all walk through. The beginning of 2016 saw the ACL with new capacity and in a position to grow programmatically. By the end of 2016, we formalized a collaborative relationship between Boulder County, the ACL and Imagine!. In 2017-2018, we are conducting a pilot training program for Imagine! case managers to improve the experience of people with IDD interfacing with the local CCB. This is funded by Boulder County through the Developmental Disabilities Fund (DD Fund). To fulfill this contract, ACL increased organizational capacity by hiring and training more advocates, and adapting the organizations' structure and operations to accommodate this new activity. ACL now provides more training to a more diverse group of professionals using technology such as webinars as well as in -person group training and in the field 1:1 training for case managers. ACL's total agency budget is bigger as a result of this contract and our accounting system has been adapted to accommodate a contract reimbursement model. Our data systems have also been adapted for the project. The ACL exceeded all of the deliverables for this contract in 2017. We have started to penetrate the law enforcement and criminal justice systems to address rights issues. The impact on people we serve is a greater ability to be heard and to understand their involvement with the criminal justice system, better access to legal services, system connections to facilitate release for people in the jail system, avoidance of unnecessary incarceration, and successful prosecution of those who offend against people with IDD. We have also expanded training for staff working in law enforcement and the justice system to proactively address the inequity in these systems. In 2016, we identified three areas of unmet needs for the people we serve. These needs are still going unmet at our current organization capacity. We are requesting additional funding from the Boulder County Mill Levy DD Fund and from foundation sources but despite out performing our deliverables and measuring to outcomes, we continue to have a limited capacity to serve a greater number of people than we currently serve and to fully serve more complicated cases particularly ones involving the criminal justice system. We have our fingers in the dyke and current demand for advocacy and training still exceeds our capacity. We do not have a waitlist and strive to serve efficiently, but we are sometimes forced to prioritize our most intensive advocacy to serve people with the most complex advocacy needs and who do not have family involved in their lives. Projects have been detailed to address the unmet needs of 3 target groups. The 3 groups are: multi - generational families with DD, people involved with the criminal justice system; and students age 14-21 transitioning from school to adult life. We already serve these target groups but do not have the resources to adequately address their needs with an early intervention/preventative approach and to address their needs for wrap -around services. 16