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Community Living BC (CLBC) is launching an updated three-year plan to improve home sharing monitoring and supports. The plan includes action steps to address the June 15 recommendations of the Office of the Auditor General of B.C. (OAG) as well as other initiatives to strengthen the delivery of home sharing.
The plan can be found here.
Home sharing is a safe and effective CLBC funded residential program that serves more than 4,200 adults with developmental disabilities. It is a service where an adult with a developmental disability shares a home with a person or family that is contracted to provide residential support. It is delivered through more than 3,800 dedicated home sharing providers and about 100 coordinating agencies.
The OAG performance audit of home sharing assessed monitoring for the service for 2018/19. CLBC welcomes the recommendations and is pleased to report that monitoring and compliance has improved each year since then.
In the 2020/21 year, more than 90 per cent of monitoring visits and follow up activities met policy requirements, meaning visits happened on time and follow up occurred as required.
As well, CLBC has partially already addressed several of the recommendations through:
- In 2018: Updating of home sharing monitoring guidance and tools
- In 2019: Launching new online system to better track data on monitoring and follow up activities
- In 2020: Developing new standards for coordinating agencies
Additional actions to be completed in the next two and a half years are:
- the development of new ways to support home sharing providers to improve and verify quality of life outcomes
- improvements to CLBC’s online system to more effectively track incident response
- prioritization of resources and efforts to ensure monitoring activities are completed each year as required by policy
CLBC conducted a province wide consultation with home sharing providers in 2018 and has since that time been working with a Home Sharing Working Group made up of home sharing providers and coordinating agencies to improve resources and supports. You can learn more about this work here.
CLBC recognizes the dedication and efforts of its home sharing providers and coordinating agencies during the recent pandemic and the shared commitment to helping supported individuals to have a safe, caring home and to be fully included in their communities. |
