In addition to providing award-winning customized supports to people with disabilities, KFI is often called upon to lend its considerable talent and expertise on a national scale. Some of the activities that CEO Gail Fanjoy and others have been involved with this year are:

• Participating on a national committee and in meetings with the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services to provide input and feedback on a new federal rule impacting Mainers and people across the country;
• Consulting with the federal Dept. of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy as a Subject Matter Expert;
• Being chosen as one of two providers nationally to address the President’s Committee on Increasing Competitive Integrated Employment for People with Intellectual Disabilities;
• Being chosen as one of three providers nationally to participate in a research project on community life engagement with the Institute for Community Inclusion, UMASS – Boston;
• Mentoring provider agencies in Kentucky, Ohio, Utah, and Tennessee who want to transform their agencies to provide personalized supports for people to live in their own homes, work in community businesses, and connect to their communities in typical ways.

Three such providers visited KFI this year – one from Tennessee, one from Ohio, and one from Utah. The latest visitors from Utah also included three Utah state employees who learned about KFI’s fully inclusive and personalized supports. They are eager to rethink Utah’s policies and practices that keep people with disabilities in institutions, day programs, sheltered workshops, and congregate living situations in their state. The provider representatives came to KFI thinking that “some people don’t belong in our day program.” When they left KFI after two days of being imbedded in our services, they were committed to shutting their day program down.