Janet Klees
Janet Klees has been involved in the lives of people with disabilities, their families, and community allies for about 40 years. For nearly 10 years, Janet has been the Executive Director of the Durham Association for Family Resources and Support (DAFRS) in a region near Toronto, Canada. DAFRS works in partnership with families to imagine, plan, and implement good lives in the community for people with disability. They utilise a principled, family-led, one-person-at-a-time, and SRV-anchored approach.
Prior to this, Janet coordinated the family-governed Deohaeko Support Network of seven families for over twenty years. She credits this work for giving her much of her practical experience.
Janet is a talented writer and has published three books directly rooted in the Deohaeko experience (We Come Bearing Gifts, Our Presence Has Roots, and Deohaeko Decades). She also writes various articles and other documents to support her work and thinking.
Janet continues to meet, share and learn with families and their chosen organisations in many parts of the world, with a focus on principled strategies to bring about roles, relationship, and places of belonging working together with families in real partnership, and helping families to build powerhouse support teams and welcoming, inclusive communities.
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Focus on home: It is not innovative to want ordinary
Families already know about home, community, and an ordinary good life. However, the forces of today’s society often make us spend far too much time and energy on figuring out home and housing that appear complex, hard to access, and better left to the professionals.
This session is more of an exploration or a reminder of what families already know – the vast array of ordinary home and housing pathways we have all sought out and developed over many years.
Shifting our minds to understand that we can want ordinary and follow common pathways to a home of one’s own (with or without companionship) is the toughest part of this challenge. But this session, filled with stories of ordinary families doing just that, could be the start of realising that home, housing, and support are not daunting tasks to be put off for another day, but exciting challenges you need not take on alone.
Find out about an Imaging Home Family Group with many successes, hear ordinary family stories, and most of all, learn that changing the family mindset toward expecting home in ordinary ways is the greatest asset in the housing journey.