State Plan and Goals

Our Current Work

While we plan for the future, we are still working under our current five-year state plan. This plan officially began in Oct. 2021 and guides our work through 2026.

Why does a State Plan matter?

Every state council like ours is required to write a new state plan every five years. The plan is our map for how we will do the work we’ve been given by the federal Developmental Disabilities Act:

• Supporting advocacy (making sure the voices of people with disabilities and their families are heard)
• Building capacity (growing the disability supports that are available)
• Systems change (making services better for people with disabilities)

How we created this plan

Our state plan is always based on your input. In 2020, hundreds of people responded to our public input survey, helping us identify what is most important to Tennessee’s disability community.

• health and wellness
• money and finance
• employment

You also told us that it is hard to learn about services in the areas that are important to you. 

The Council gets ready for a new state plan by doing a “comprehensive review and analysis” of Tennessee disability services. This helps us understand all the services that already exist. We also learned that navigating the system is difficult; Tennessee has 154 disability services across 23 different state agencies, which can be overwhelming for families.

Our plan has three broad goals. Under the goals, objectives tell the concrete ways we will meet the goal. We’ll also share some examples of current projects under each goal.

 Five-Year State Plan 2022-2026

Goal 1: Developing Engaged Leaders

• Objective 1.1: Provide leadership learning and development programs to Tennesseans with disabilities and their family members to increase advocacy skills and engagement.
• Objective 2.1: Support grassroots self-advocacy in Tennessee through three training and program development activities to increase advocacy skills and engagement.

Example projects: Partners in Policymaking®, Council scholarship fund, youth trainings, supporting self-advocacy groups

Goal 2: Improving Policy and Practice

• Objective 2.1: Track, summarize in plain language, and share information with Tennesseans about policies that impact people with disabilities. Position the Council as a top resource for Tennesseans to learn about policy affecting people with disabilities.
• Objective 2.2: Ask for and study the perspectives of people with disabilities to identify system barriers and make sure those perspective influence policy changes.
• Objective 2.3: Measure progress toward inclusion, self-determination, and independence.

Example projects: Tracking opportunities to impact policymaking, sharing policy information in our e-newsletter, offering input and recommendations on policy changes, trainings on best practices

Goal 3: Informing the Public

• Objective 3.1: Use a wide range of communication tools/platforms and partnerships to:
  • Increase accessible disability information and resources for people with disabilities and their families.
  • Build understanding and engagement on disability issues relevant to Tennesseans.
  • Increase engagement with historically underrepresented groups – including Black, Hispanic/Latinx, LGBTQ+, immigrant, refugee, and rural communities.
• Objective 3.2: In fiscal year 2022, work together with the Tennessee Developmental Disabilities Network communications team to increase access to healthcare information for LGBTQ+ Tennesseans with disabilities.

Example projects: All Council communication platforms (like social media or our Breaking Ground magazine), community events, partnerships to share information with other agencies or groups