Skip to content

Ideas Were Cooking On The FMC Hot Stove!

On February 3rd, Families Matter Cooperative offered a unique networking and knowledge exchange event called “The Hot Stove and Collab.”

This interactive event was designed to offer parents, siblings and caregivers with new tools, knowledge and information on the future of housing for persons with developmental disabilities.

Moderated by CBC journalist Ashley Wright, “The Hot Stove” was entertaining and informative, including our own LiveWorkPlay Support Coordinator Allison Moores. The rest of the panel was comprised of:

“It was a great event, we are very pleased with the results,” said FMC Executive Director Jeff Bond. “The feedback was very positive and we’ve heard  that some participants will continue some of the work they started during The Collab portion of the event. Allison’s contribution on behalf of LiveWorkPlay was fantastic, her approach and ability to share her knowledge was an important contribution to our engaging panel and the dialogues that ensued!”

LiveWorkPlay believes in the important contribution of independent family networks, and is excited to see the success of events like The Hot Stove and Collab.

“Family members are often overwhelmed with urgent issues,” said Allison. “The opportunity to get together on a Sunday morning and have deeper conversations and access to different perspectives is hard to come by. I see great value in these FMC events and the diversity of the guests, because family members can get a comprehensive answer from a variety of perspectives, all at the same gathering.”

LiveWorkPlay has also supported FMC’s development of a video series on Innovative Housing Solutions that has contributed to the province-wide housing dialogue.

“The FMC series presents different types of housing solutions in ways that help family members, people with disabilities, and service agencies imagine many different possibilities,” said Keenan Wellar, Co-Leader and Director of Communications at LiveWorkPlay. “Ultimately we hope to see this dialogue and our province’s entire approach to housing evolve to where every person with an intellectual disability and/or autism has the right to their own home and the support they need to live in that home. Life is not a program, and housing is not a model. I think Ontario is slowly coming around to the understanding that the needed innovations in housing are all about the support that is provided, not coming up new ways of organizating people to live in staffed environments or unnatural groupings that would never be found in the rest of society.”

Watch here for future FMC events!