The Disability Leadership Collaborative is an informal collaborative group for leaders in the disability community, including nonprofit executive directors and program directors from educational institutions, government agencies and more — all working with Nashville’s IDD community.

The group meets monthly on a date and time chosen by the speaker at that month’s meeting, Most meetings are in person, but today’s meeting is virtual as the facilitators are all in Oak Ridge, where they work at The Emory Valley Center, a 501c3 nonprofit whose work includes adult services: community integration, behavioral health, community supported living, and personal assistant.

The Emory Valley Center team will be talking with the Collaborative on how they identified a need for behavioral services for people dually diagnosed with an intellectual or developmental disability and mental health diagnosis, and will talk about how they secured start-up funding for the program, giving an overview of their current work, and sharing some data collected since the program began. They also will talk about some of their success stories and lessons learned.

So many of us working in this field serve individuals with a dual diagnosis and could benefit from learning more about another organization’s success in this area. We hope by inviting the Center to talk with us that we can all take away some information that will help us meet our missions more effectively. Their speakers will be EVC President Jennifer Enderson, SVP of Operations Crystal Hicks, and Director of Clinical Services Abigail Donald.

For more information and the Zoom link, contact Carolyn Naifeh.