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The Arc of Greater Tarrant County
www.arcgtc.org
Mission
The Arc of Greater Tarrant County advocates on behalf of and in collaboration with
people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and their families to improve
their quality of life and to expand opportunities to participate actively in the
community.
We do this by supporting and educating individuals with intellectual
and developmental disabilities and their families, service providers and the community,
and by providing or helping community efforts to provide needed supports and services.
Project
Our vision is to have a website that can do several things.
First, it would look better and be a bit easier to navigate than the one we have.
In addition, it would have a section for providers of services to present their
services in a "virtual provider fair" where potential consumers can see video's
of an agency's services, see descriptions of programs, and hear testimony from consumers
so as to inform them in their search for services. That search for services is overwhelming
in a community where "If I don't know what there is, how can I ask for it?" We want
to bring all of the complexity of searching for services, determining benefits,
and navigating a system that is by-and-large fragmented and not user friendly into
one user friendly, simple vehicle.
Secondly, the website would have the capacity to allow basic resource data input
such as the names of community resources, address, etc, plus details on their clients,
customers and services, and have that data automatically convert into a format which
creates a directory of services. Not only could people see and search the directory
online, it would allow us to print out a hard copy directory with a table of contents,
appendix, pages of directory information, etc... It would be able to produce individualized
sub-specialty directories by themselves. It would be able to print a directory categorized
with agency services in chapters (day habilitation programs; sheltered workshops;
dentists who accept people with disabilities; etc.). In a way, it would be a directory
version of QuickBooks. It would be able to print directories for specific counties
(we cover five). In addition, we would prefer it to have the capability to be a
searchable directory on our website.
We have over time developed a 200 page directory of services for our five counties.
Maintenance, updating and adding new services, however, is a nightmare. A software
program built into our website such as that proposed could be a Wiki-style process
where anyone on staff could add to the data base and the directory would be automatically
updated. We use Access for our statistical reports and services tracking but have
been told that neither Access nor Outlook can do what we need for our dream directory
program and web site.
Next, we would like the program you design for us to have major heading sections/pages
where we can create a comprehensive forest of clearly identified links to other
sites, such as state informational sites, national advocacy sites, and related.
Rather than have just a page of links, this capacity would be creative, colorful
and informative so that even the least among us could navigate it to obtain information
and guidance.
Our ultimate goal is to provide a gold mine of information, connections to information,
and even e-learning topics to increase our consumer’s capacity to self-direct and
become active partners in the community. Sources of information now, quite frankly,
are fragmented, difficult to find and use, disconnected with each other, and boring.
We want to have a site that overcomes existing barriers to effective information
and support.
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