A Community Blueprint for Safety and Quality in Licensed Settings- Interest and Feedback Form |
Introduction
Thank you for attending the Virtual Conversation: Ensuring Safety & Thriving Lives in Licensed Settings on June 30, 2025. We appreciated the opportunity to hear your experiences, thoughts, and ideas on how to improve the health and safety of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) in licensed residential settings.
The information you shared during the meeting helped shape our draft Community Blueprint for Safety and Quality in Licensed Settings. This document outlines the roles, responsibilities, and recommended reforms for four key groups—state leadership, provider agencies, frontline staff, and family members/guardians—who are essential to ensuring the safety and well-being of individuals in residential care. In addition, the draft Blueprint highlights suggestions for modifying existing tools, implementing new technologies to support providers and Direct Support Professionals (DSPs), and identifying additional areas for advocacy.
We now invite you to provide feedback by identifying your areas of greatest interest among the different focus areas, or “buckets,” and by identifying any gaps or missing information. Your input will help inform the discussion at follow-up meetings.
We look forward to continuing this important work with you as we refine, update, and implement the recommendations in the Blueprint, and as we work together to create a residential system that truly ensures health, safety, and thriving lives for individuals with I/DD.
Thank you,
Paul Aronsohn
NJ Ombudsman for Individuals with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities and Their Families
Mercedes Witowsky
Executive Director, NJ Council on Developmental Disabilities
Dorothy Blakeslee & Cathy Tamburello
Chair and Vice-Chair, Regional Family Support Planning Councils
The information you shared during the meeting helped shape our draft Community Blueprint for Safety and Quality in Licensed Settings. This document outlines the roles, responsibilities, and recommended reforms for four key groups—state leadership, provider agencies, frontline staff, and family members/guardians—who are essential to ensuring the safety and well-being of individuals in residential care. In addition, the draft Blueprint highlights suggestions for modifying existing tools, implementing new technologies to support providers and Direct Support Professionals (DSPs), and identifying additional areas for advocacy.
We now invite you to provide feedback by identifying your areas of greatest interest among the different focus areas, or “buckets,” and by identifying any gaps or missing information. Your input will help inform the discussion at follow-up meetings.
We look forward to continuing this important work with you as we refine, update, and implement the recommendations in the Blueprint, and as we work together to create a residential system that truly ensures health, safety, and thriving lives for individuals with I/DD.
Thank you,
Paul Aronsohn
NJ Ombudsman for Individuals with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities and Their Families
Mercedes Witowsky
Executive Director, NJ Council on Developmental Disabilities
Dorothy Blakeslee & Cathy Tamburello
Chair and Vice-Chair, Regional Family Support Planning Councils