01/13/2026
For people with intellectual disabilities loneliness doesn’t live in buildings. It lives in the absence of relationship.
In institutions, people were surrounded by staff. In apartments, people are often surrounded by silence. Neither creates community. Neither creates friendship. Both can leave a person unseen, unmissed, and unknown.
What makes a place human is not its size. For some people we replaced one kind of isolation with another and called it progress.
Without friendship, a home becomes a holding place.
Our work, the real work, is helping people live connected instead of managed. Connected to neighbours. Connected to familiar places. Connected to people who show up as friends in your life because they want to, not because they are paid to.
That is why friendship matters more than housing. That is why one of the most important training modules for direct support professionals is, without a doubt, the Open Future Learning module: Building Friendships and Community.
Because this module offers a full range of practical strategies support workers can use, not only to help people build friendships and community, but to sustain them over time.
Are you a director of training and do you want to see how Open Future Learning can work for your team? Link to demo: https://www.openfuturelearning.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=login.RequestDemo
P.S. Open Future is now SCORM compliant. Use our courses on any LMS!
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ID: Drawing shows a building with a lot of windows. All of the windows are black showing no lights on inside. There is a sign on top of the building that reads "Institution" - next to the building is a man in a suit with his arm pointing to the building - a speech bubble from the man says "We closed all of the institutions."
Under the above is a replica of the building, this time one light is on in one of the windows of the building to indicate that one person is at home. The sign on top of the building reads "Apartments" next to the building is a man sat in a wheelchair - a speech bubble from the man says "Did you?"
Small text along the bottom of the image reads: "An institution isn't a building."
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Art by
