50 Years, 50 Stories - Colette Marie

This week’s installment of “50 Years, 50 Stories” comes from Colette Marie, Director of Imagine!’s Out & About department. In her story, Colette traces the history of Out & About, and emphasizes the importance of community access and inclusion in Imagine!’s services.

Thanks for sharing your insights, Colette!

The Out & About Story

By Colette Marie

Key players in the early days of Out & About include (from l to r):
Lisa Fiero, Colette Marie, Jon Tuschman, Ashley Himber, and Ansley Dickens.

I’m grateful that twenty-nine years of work at Imagine! has translated into a multitude of rich and inspiring learning experiences, at the heart of which has been community.

I’ve had the good fortune to work in a variety of roles, most recently for the last sixteen years as the manager of Out & About (O & A). Though Out & About officially opened its doors in 1997, I can trace its beginnings back to 1983 when the deinstitutionalization movement was in full swing and I was beginning to learn what that could mean. I was new to Boulder, attending graduate school at CU, and moved into a house near Chautauqua Park. I regularly walked down through the neighborhood known as “The Hill” to get to campus. On one of my first walks, I met a young man from Carmel House who told me he wanted a “real job.” As I got to know him better, I came to understand that a “real job” for him meant that he very much wanted to gain entry into the “real world”--my first tangible introduction to the significance of community integration.

A year later, I took my newly acquired degree in English and my developing passion for community integration and went in search of meaningful work that would provide me with a non-academic opportunity to learn for a couple of years. I applied at the Boulder County Board for Developmental Disabilities (BCBDD - an early name for Imagine!) for a Day Program Counselor position. Mark Emery, who was still in his first year with the company, interviewed me. He was challenging the idea of traditional day programming and talking about viable jobs for people historically considered unemployable. I was very pleased to get the job.

My first two years were spent in what was to become Labor Source. It was a very different time. The concept of people with developmental disabilities living and working in the community was new and sometimes considered impossible, crazy, or even wrong. Therefore, our focus was on learning by doing and assuming it was possible. As we moved more into the community, we all learned about the inherent and very real rewards there. For example, one day when the bus broke down, three individuals with developmental disabilities who were part of a work crew willingly walked an extra mile to get to their job—without promise of any extra reward. This might have been the moment when I learned that they wanted to go to work, and my job was more about being supportive and staying out of their way.

A few years and several job titles later, in 1997, the BCBDD had become the Developmental Disabilities Center (DDC). The DDC had completed a survey that indicated there were consumers who, despite the array of services and supports being offered, were not successfully accessing their community. Sterling Wind and I were asked to form a committee to look into the issue. As we interviewed consumers and family members, we discovered that along with transportation being a formidable obstacle, there were many people who needed more instruction and support in order to participate successfully in community activities. We concluded the DDC needed a new service -- one with transportation built in -- which would provide adults (note that there was no mention of children yet) with opportunities to socialize and connect to their community.

In November 1997 Out & About started service delivery. I became the manager with a part-time assistant, two instructors, a van, and a car. In January 1998, Out & About published its first Catalog of activities. Eighteen participants signed up that quarter, compared to more than 100 participants per quarter now.

Ansley Dickens, a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist, was hired in the spring of 1998 as an instructor and brought with her knowledge of Therapeutic Recreation (TR), and suggestions on how we could implement it into O & A. TR is now an integral part of Out & About’s service delivery.

Ansley and I opened O&A’s first camp in June 1998 with twelve kids attending. It was only afterwards that I realized we needed Child Care licensure. (Oops!) We went to the state to get approval for both an After School and Summer Camp program and learned that because we are community-based, utilize cars and vans instead of buses, and work with school-aged kids through high school, we are three times exceptional and needed to secure a waiver in order to obtain licensure--which we did.

In 2000, Ansley launched a TR Internship program. Ashley Himber was Out & About’s first TR intern, and eventually became responsible for putting much of the TR framework that is so much a part of Out & About’s service delivery into place. She was also instrumental in helping develop a process for interviewing participants and families in order to evaluate our services and elicit feedback for future planning.

While Out & About has grown and changed tremendously over the years, it has remained a program dedicated to promoting community and learning. I continue to have the good fortune to learn and grow myself and to be inspired all these years later—by participants, parents, siblings, instructors, therapists, and community members, which has everything to do with why that initial 2-year commitment has extended to 29.

Are you interested in sharing your story for “50 Years, 50 Stories?” If so, contact Caroline Siegfried at caroline@imaginecolorado.org or 303-926-6405. We’d love to hear from you!