Community Living Program was established in 1989 to support young people with an intellectual disability who wished to move out of the family home and experience independent living.

This original orientation changed as the majority of young people with an intellectual disability who were referred to C.L.P. were young people with an intellectual disability who were living in youth shelters or exiting some form of state care, control or treatment.

C.L.P. has engaged in a number of research and development projects in the areas of homelessness, criminal justice, mental health, literacy, employment and housing. As C.L.P. is a geographically based service, it developed a new service (A.R.R.O.S.) At Risk Research Outreach Service to provide outreach services to young people with intellectual disabilities who were homeless. It has also fostered the development of a workers' co-operative, housing co-operative, literacy programs and a range of other initiatives.

Capacity Building Framework

In responding to the needs of people with intellectual disability in the community, C.L.P. and A.R.R.O.S. have adopted a practice framework "Capacity Building Framework" based on the work of Benn, Burkitt and Kelly.

Capacity Building Framework is as follows:

CLP Service Framework

Elements of the framework

Building relationships

The first of these inter-related capacity building activities is to extend the range of people's relationships. People generally do what they can with what they have so building new relationships will extend both the reach and range of people's relationship repertoire, widening their web of support, increasing their access to further resources and opening opportunities to hear and understand different information.

Providing new information:

The second element of capacity building is the provision of new information that can come from a thousand different sources. The source of the new information doesn't matter. What does matter is that information is given in a form that relates to people's reality, not in an abstract form that does little to make connection to the actual circumstance.

Generating New Resources:

The third element of capacity building is to generate fresh resources. Fresh resources can come from external sources (e.g. grants, charity, and investment) or be 'underutilised' resources that are in people's possession (e.g. micro savings).

Decision Making:

If there is to be ownership and take up action people need to make decisions individually and together to do something to change the situation for the better. Often there are deep and entrenched difficulties which impact on people's individual and collective decision making ability. These may be fear, lack of knowledge, group dynamics and uncertainty. Development work seeks to unlock these difficulties.