Online via Zoom on November 1, 2024
Hosted by Maryland Support Broker Council & Shared Support Maryland, Inc.

Marylanders, join us virtually on November 1, 2024 at 12:00 p - 1:00 p for a celebratory informational session on Self-Directed Services. November 1st is a growing movement in Self Directed Services ~ check out Minnesota and New Jersey!

Self Directed Services is almost 19 years old in Maryland for people who receive services through the Developmental Disabilities Administration! Thousands of people are directing their services, we have a growing network of deep experience and knowledge and an incredible opportunity to impact each other. Let’s do that!

You should attend if you are a person directing your services, someone who is interested in directing their services, family and friends, or any of the people connected to the systems and services in support of Self Direction.

Risk for some is concrete, and decisions made about taking them are born from that foundation... What about the gray area? Isn't that where life lives? For most people, the answer is yes and the amount of risk one takes varies greatly. Who are we to determine this amount (or none) for other people outside of children? Examine your foundation and practices that grow from it. People with disabilities want people out of their way and to stick to service provision. Take an organizational (and personal) look at risk, how it's handled and it's impact on people. Examine your foundation and practices that grow from it.

General Admission: $55

Presenters: Gail Godwin and Tracy Wright

Autonomy and independence are different. Independence is being free from control and the help of others. Autonomy is the ability to act, make your own decisions... It requires experience to have autonomy. Faced with everyday decisions about doing for or supporting someone to do... To decide for, or to support someone in their decision making power. Who is making choices and decisions? Being honest about this and determining why this happens for someone allows us to plan forward and get out of the control seat.

General Admission: $50

There are endless ways you can move toward more personalized and self-directed services and be an agency that people choose based on the amount of choice and control you offer to customers. People looking for agency support can attend this session to learn what to seek in a person-directed organization. This session looks directly at your agency's specific operational practices. Learn why they need to change and develop a plan for them to shift in order to allow more service choice and control for customers.

“This inspired me to do more.”

Presenter: Gail Godwin
General Admission: $85

Join us for a special hour of Questions and Answers where the topic is driven by our Training and Development Institute Members.

Guest Admission: $5

This session is practical and active. Use a tool to work through all aspects of your work to determine Rights restrictions we may not know about and develop a plan to correct this. We will introduce a tool that assesses risk and plans through minimizing risk which is sometimes the very reason for restrictions. Attendees leave with both tools and at the very least a beginning of working plans to move forward.

Presenters: Nicole Leblanc and Gail Godwin
General Admission: $50

Expectations Matter: My Life, My Choice, My Plan is a person-centered planning training developed and trained by people with disabilities and family members.

After the training, people with disabilities and family members will understand:

● Person centered planning

● Support available through the process of planning

● How to develop your plan and make it work

● Expectations for timelines and accountability

Who should attend? People with disabilities and family members who want to know how the process should go and how to be in charge of it, service providers, service coordinators, coordinators of community services, and supports planners.

General Admission: $50.00
Facilitators: Samantha Davis and Tracy Wright

Offered 2 times during membership period!



Total risk avoidance has been programmed into the lives of people with IDD. Yet one of the best ways to learn, grow, and be successful in today’s world is to experience the taste of failure!

Join us for Risks and Rights: They Belong to the Person to change your mindset about risk, balance risk and choice, and ensure full enjoyment of fundamental rights while balancing risk impact.

During the training, you’ll:

• Learn to balance risk and choice

• Explore the tension between safety and empowerment

• Gain tools to help manage degrees of risk in person-centered planning

• Determine rights restrictions you may not know about or realize, then correct them!

This session is practical and active. We will introduce a tool that assesses risk and plans through minimizing risk, which is sometimes the very reason for restrictions. Attendees leave with both tools and a working plan to move forward!

Available as a free selection with membership.
General Admission: $60.00
Facilitators: Gail Godwin and Nicole Leblanc

Offered 3 times during membership period!

There are endless ways you can move toward more personalized and self-directed services and be an agency that people choose based on the amount of choice and control you offer to customers. This is an excellent session (with a track record) for providers who want to look directly at their agency's operations and create an infrastructure that allows for person-direction within the organization. Learn why they need to change and develop a plan for them to shift in order to allow more service choice and control for customers. People looking for agency support can attend this session to learn what to seek in a person-directed organization. 

This is a practical training session with time to think and plan built in. Session includes 1 hour follow up session technical support. Break it up into 2, bring your friends, make it useful. Great for teams!

“This inspired me to do more.”

Available as a free selection with membership.
Employers who Self Direct their DDA services may use their Participant Education, Training and Advocacy Supports funds for the registration fee!

General Admission: $125.00

Looking for other dates? Check out our full training calendar.

If you self direct your services in Maryland, you are a legal employer. Human Resources Management 101 PLUS is for people who Self Direct their DDA services, Support Brokers and Team Members. Learn from a Human Resources Management Administrator and increase knowledge of human resources management practices, understand pertinent human resources laws, Equal Opportunity Employment (EEOC) and Fair Labor Standards (FLS) in our day to day Human Resources Practices.

Taught by Ann Osten, PHR and Gail Godwin, Support Broker

Employers who Self Direct their DDA services may use their Participant Education, Training and Advocacy Supports funds for the registration fee!

If your Support Broker works for Shared Support Maryland, Inc. your registration is free.

General Admission: $45.00

People being in the lead of their planning are catching on. Students are leading their IEPs! This session is for anyone leading or supporting someone to lead their planning process. When people work together there exist dynamics of hierarchy, people in charge of processes, and who knows someone best. This session helps us learn to work collaboratively, with the person in the lead. Leave with strategies of coaching and tips for everyone to assure that the person for whom the plan is for is directing the development and execution of their plan.

Available as a free selection with membership.
Employers who Self Direct their DDA services may use their Participant Education, Training and Advocacy Supports funds for the registration fee!

General Admission: $45.00

Join us for a special hour of Questions and Answers from the team at Shared Support Maryland and Guests! The topic will be decided by the Membership in advance, publicized and open for registration.

Free!

Welcome new members!

We are SO excited to launch our first ever cohort for the Training and Development Institute.

For this hour together you will get to know the other members, learn more about the membership program and what to expect, and leave with a greater sense of clarity about the journey you’ve committed to!

Gail Godwin will be meeting new members who are curious about joining us for the Training and Development Institute this year.

Want to meet some of the people who are thinking about joining us this year?

You're welcome to join us even if you're just curious, you want to hang out with other person-driven providers and people, you want to check out our training style, or you just want to hang with excellent people!

This session exemplifies the relationship between a person and their direct support staff. For a person, their direct supporter could be the key to accessing the world they want and for the direct supporter, the person is key to their employment and quality in their daily work and for an agency; these two people are your most important asset. There is a natural wonder about who is in charge when you have a supervisor that is designated and different than the person you provide direct support to. If you are in charge, then why does your direct supporter have another boss or two or three. Excerpts from Make a Difference (Mount and O’Brien: permission granted) will be used in this sensitive and important session. Attendees will leave understanding the collaborative nature of this relationship and tools.

Available as a free selection with a membership!
General Admission: $60.00

Offered 2 time during membership period!



Total risk avoidance has been programmed into the lives of people with IDD. Yet one of the best ways to learn, grow, and be successful in today’s world is to experience the taste of failure!

Join us for Risks and Rights: They Belong to the Person to change your mindset about risk, balance risk and choice, and ensure full enjoyment of fundamental rights while balancing risk impact.

During the training, you’ll:

• Learn to balance risk and choice

• Explore the tension between safety and empowerment

• Gain tools to help manage degrees of risk in person-centered planning

• Determine rights restrictions you may not know about or realize, then correct them!


This session is practical and active. We will introduce a tool that assesses risk and plans through minimizing risk, which is sometimes the very reason for restrictions. Attendees leave with both tools and a working plan to move forward!

Available as a free selection with membership.
General Admission: $60.00
Facilitators: Gail Godwin and Nicole Leblanc

Participants will increase their knowledge and implementation of Human Resource Management practices and understand law as it pertains to employer authority. Components of the sessions include Equal Opportunity Employment and Fair Labor Standards.

Available as a free selection with membership.
General admission: $45

Foundational principles of Person-Directed Work are essential. In the most practical sense, they give us a baseline about where we are in our thinking, action, organizational practices, and systems. They provide a starting point or a refresher as people take charge of their lives through services, supports, and their schedules and as we plan to transform our work. Leave with your baseline and a general plan.

Free for Training and Development Institute Members
General Admission: $45.00

Challenges come in many forms. We share our joys and our worries not only through verbal communication, but also through our actions, and behavior. This session will help us to see the other side of the coin. Are we listening to what the behavior and actions of people are saying? Are we thinking about what needs are not being met? Using person-centered principles, communication, and learning where and when people have choice and control, we can create safe spaces - environments where people can express themselves in healthy ways and have their needs met. This session endeavors us to look deeper into the behaviors we and the people around us are expressing and how we can help communicate in ways that can be understood. 

Available as a free selection with membership.
General Admission: $60.00

Offered 2 time during membership period!



Total risk avoidance has been programmed into the lives of people with IDD. Yet one of the best ways to learn, grow, and be successful in today’s world is to experience the taste of failure!

Join us for Risks and Rights: They Belong to the Person to change your mindset about risk, balance risk and choice, and ensure full enjoyment of fundamental rights while balancing risk impact.

During the training, you’ll:

• Learn to balance risk and choice

• Explore the tension between safety and empowerment

• Gain tools to help manage degrees of risk in person-centered planning

• Determine rights restrictions you may not know about or realize, then correct them!


This session is practical and active. We will introduce a tool that assesses risk and plans through minimizing risk, which is sometimes the very reason for restrictions. Attendees leave with both tools and a working plan to move forward!

Available as a free selection with membership.
General Admission: $60.00

Offered 3 times during membership period!

There are endless ways you can move toward more personalized and self-directed services and be an agency that people choose based on the amount of choice and control you offer to customers. This is an excellent session (with a track record) for providers who want to look directly at their agency's operations and create an infrastructure that allows for person-direction within the organization. Learn why they need to change and develop a plan for them to shift in order to allow more service choice and control for customers. People looking for agency support can attend this session to learn what to seek in a person-directed organization. 

This is a practical training session with time to think and plan built in. Session includes 1 hour follow up session technical support. Break it up into 2, bring your friends, make it useful. Great for teams!

“This inspired me to do more.”

Available as a free selection with membership.
General Admission: $125.00

Looking for other dates? Check out our full training calendar.

People being in the lead of their planning are catching on. Students are leading their IEPs! This session is for anyone leading or supporting someone to lead their planning process. When people work together there exist dynamics of hierarchy, people in charge of processes, and who knows someone best. This session helps us learn to work collaboratively, with the person in the lead. Leave with strategies of coaching and tips for everyone to assure that the person for whom the plan is for is directing the development and execution of their plan.

Available as a free selection with membership.
General Admission: $45.00

Offered 3 times during membership period!

There are endless ways you can move toward more personalized and self-directed services and be an agency that people choose based on the amount of choice and control you offer to customers. This is an excellent session (with a track record) for providers who want to look directly at their agency's operations and create an infrastructure that allows for person-direction within the organization. Learn why they need to change and develop a plan for them to shift in order to allow more service choice and control for customers. People looking for agency support can attend this session to learn what to seek in a person-directed organization. 

This is a practical training session with time to think and plan built in. Session includes 1 hour follow up session technical support. Break it up into 2, bring your friends, make it useful. Great for teams!

“This inspired me to do more.”

Available as a free selection with membership.
General Admission: $125.00

Looking for other dates? Check out our full training calendar.

Join us for a special hour of Questions and Answers from the team at Shared Support Maryland and Guests! The topic will be decided by the Membership in advance, publicized and open for registration.

Free!

This session exemplifies the relationship between a person and their direct support staff. For a person, their direct supporter could be the key to accessing the world they want and for the direct supporter, the person is key to their employment and quality in their daily work and for an agency; these two people are your most important asset. There is a natural wonder about who is in charge when you have a supervisor that is designated and different than the person you provide direct support to. If you are in charge, then why does your direct supporter have another boss or two or three. Excerpts from Make a Difference (Mount and O’Brien: permission granted) will be used in this sensitive and important session. Attendees will leave understanding the collaborative nature of this relationship and tools.

Members: FREE
General Admission: $60.00

Join us for a special hour of Questions and Answers from the team at Shared Support Maryland and Guests! The topic will be decided by the Membership in advance, publicized and open for registration.

Free!

Offered 2 time during membership period!

This session is practical and active. Use a tool to work through all aspects of your work to determine Rights restrictions we may not know about and develop a plan to correct this. We will introduce a tool that assesses risk and plans through minimizing risk which is sometimes the very reason for restrictions. Attendees leave with both tools and at the very least a beginning of working plans to move forward.

Members: FREE
General Admission: $60.00

Offered 2 times during membership period!

There are endless ways you can move toward more personalized and self-directed services and be an agency that people choose based on the amount of choice and control you offer to customers. People looking for agency support can attend this session to learn what to seek in a person-directed organization.  This session looks directly at your agency’s specific operational practices. Learn why they need to change and develop a plan for them to shift in order to allow more service choice and control for customers.

“This inspired me to do more.”

Available as a free selection with membership.
General Admission: $85.00

Offered 3 times during the membership year!

Person-centered planning works best when everyone knows what they’re doing and what to expect. For years, only the “pros” or support providers have been trained - no one’s training the person whose plan and life is at the center. We believe that’s backwards! It’s your plan, and you should know what to expect. If we’re all trained, the plans are better - and they’re REAL plans with real steps.

How do you facilitate a planning meeting? How do you prep for a meeting? How do you stay in charge at the meeting, when agency can be taken away in one comment - “I’ll help you with that” - or even deciding who comes? Answers to these questions and more can be found in the Expectations Matter deeper dive, Accountability and Assurance course, a “202”- level training for those who have already taken our introductory session.

Learn more about Expectations Matter training here.

Members: FREE
General Admission: $60