Partnerships to Promote Self-Determination
UMKC and KU in Partnership Receive 4 Million Dollar Grant to Assist Persons with Disabilities
The Administration on Developmental Disabilities announced that it would fund “A National Gateway on Self-Determination for Persons with Developmental Disabilities” in the amount of $800,000 per year for 5 years.
The intent of this cooperative agreement is to create a national consortium to address training programs that assist persons with disabilities in practicing self-determination in their lives. The program will also demonstrate how advanced technology can be used to make more powerful training programs, in part by creating a national web portal that brings together users and that can be downloaded onto Ipods.
Key to this initiative are the beliefs upon which this grant was developed - that development of self-determination is a lifelong process, a means to obtaining an improved quality of life, and most importantly – that people with developmental disabilities must be equal partners in the process.
Dr. Carl F. Calkins of the UMKC Institute for Human Development (UCEDD) and Dr. Michael Wehmeyer of the Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD), Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies will be co-principal investigators. The contract creates a 5 member leadership consortium also including The University of Illinois Chicago Department of Disability and Human Development (UCEDD), University of Oregon Center on Human Development (UCEDD), and Westchester (NY) Institute for Human Development (UCEDD) at the New York Medical College.
For more information:
Contact: Carl F. Calkins, 816.235.5872