SEEC (Seeking Equality, Empowerment, and Community) is a Maryland-based provider of employment, community living, and community development supports to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Originally established in 1987, SEEC started converting from facility-based to exclusively community-based supports in 2005, and closed down its center-based program completely in 2009. Currently all of SEEC’s supports are individualized and community-based, in keeping with the organization’s mission “to support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to direct their lives with dignity, choice, authority, and responsibility.” SEEC provides supports to over 200 people with IDD throughout Montgomery County and the District of Columbia. Like many providers of individualized supports, SEEC has had to find creative ways to individualize supports even though its funding structures do not support 1:1 staffing. One way they do this is by deliberately building both human capital (community living skills) and social capital (relationships in the community). As skills and relationships are built, paid supports can be faded, thus making more efficient use of resources in the longer term
