Director Spotlight: Jody Roberts (DE)

1. What inspired you to enter the IDD field?

I don’t think I entered the IDD field as much as I found myself, quite suddenly, in it. I was trained as a chemist, then pursued degrees in the social sciences, and eventually spent a fair amount of my time working at the intersection of science and environmental policy. When my oldest daughter was born with cerebral palsy, I found myself in a place that felt pretty far from any training or experience I had up to that point.

So I started where it felt most comfortable: looking for spaces for innovation in disability systems. As a parent, I was struck by how antiquated so many of our supports felt—both the material technologies in use and the social and policy infrastructure that supported them. But right beyond those more historical relics were examples of where we might go—for example, new assistive and communication technologies that could literally give voice to those previously locked out of participating in the world around them. I wanted to find ways to build on those opportunities by bringing to the disability space people who hadn’t previously recognized themselves or their work as having meaning for people with disabilities.

I recall a tour I took at the time of a new collaborative research space—a tech start-up incubator designed to leverage the local legacy of innovation in engineering and new materials. I remember turning to the executive director and saying that it would be amazing if some of this work could be connected with the needs of those with disabilities; that there could be possible collaborations with some of the other local partners at academic institutions and healthcare sites. And I recall the strange look of bewilderment that communicated both confusion and disconnect with the mission. That felt too niche. That’s not what we expect from these companies. There’s no market for that.

When the opportunity arose to more officially enter the IDD field professionally, not as a parent, I realized I was being given the chance to bring this previous work into a very different space, but with the potential for far greater impact. It was a gift. I’ve tried to use those experiences to keep me grounded in a perspective that remains centered on what brought me here: empathy for the experiences others are having; humility in the face of what I do not know; and innovation for what could be.

2. Which priorities are guiding your work this year?

One of the challenges of this job, and our collective work, is finding a way to focus and prioritize to make the best use of our resources amidst a wide landscape of needs, challenges, and opportunities. As we lean into this current calendar year, we have momentum building across three areas where we feel best situated to act strategically and keep building system capacity and sustainability.

We need to remain focused on workforce development. Building and maintaining a skilled and robust workforce is the critical element in ensuring that service availability can grow with increasing needs. The challenge, of course, is that the traditional tools that might be used simply aren’t available or are outside of our direct control. We’re leveraging the opportunities we do have, which include using data to help tell the story of what this workforce is and why it’s so needed and investing in career development and professional growth opportunities.

Building on the strength and success of our recently launched enhanced behavioral residential service, we’re continuing our efforts to flip the script on crisis planning, focusing instead on strengthening the home and building easy access to short-term stabilization through the introduction of a new crisis respite program. Doing so continues our effort to remove the need for crisis-based use of institutional care and provide easier access back home when a true crisis does emerge. When we invest in supporting the home, we make the system as a whole stronger.

Finally, we’re focused on expanding our supportive reach across the lifespan. That means strengthening our connections and collaborations with our youth partners in education and labor to make sure we know every individual as an individual long before they need our services. And it increasingly means working with our state’s aging agency to ensure that everyone, including individuals with IDD, can age in place with dignity.

3. What place best reflects the spirit of your state?

If there’s one feature, one place, that captures the spirit of Delaware, it would have to be the Delaware Bay. The Bay is the backbone of Delaware, supporting both its industrial heritage and its agricultural richness. As the state has evolved, so has the Bay and our relationship to it. In a rapidly changing climate, it is a source of great vulnerability. But learning to live in partnership with the Bay, understanding those dynamics of vulnerability and opportunity, also provides strength and resilience. And those are lessons we could apply in our work as well.