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The Beginning - April 1989

Community Living Trust was initially established in April 1989 by the Waikato Area Health Board (now the Ministry of Health), to repatriate people with intellectual disabilities from Tokanui Hospital into their communities. Read more

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Our Inspirational Dream

People with Intellectual Disabilities living their dreams through community connections.

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What is CQL Accreditation, and why is it important?

by Community Living | Jul 29, 2020

People with disabilities deserve to live a life filled with choice, control and connection. Community Living provides support to help make this possible. 

We believe it’s important not just to say this, but to reflect it in everything we do. One of the best ways to show our commitment is through a rigorous process of accreditation. To do this we turned to the internationally recognised Council of Quality and Leadership (CQL).

Community Living is now the first organisation in New Zealand to achieve this CQL accreditation.

Our review focussed on the following key area:

  • Basic Assurances® - Ensuring fundamental safeguards related to health, safety and human security



This means:

We put people first - Accreditation helps us be person-centred. By using tools like the Personal Outcome Measures, people are in charge of their own lives. We promote dignity - Accreditation promotes dignity for all people. When we embrace this value, we make sure there is a culture of respect. We facilitate opportunity - Accreditation creates opportunity for people supported. It gives us the resources to help them live their dreams. We focus on outcomes - Accreditation is about results. We don’t just want to have supports, we want to see the impact they have on people’s lives. We pursue the highest standards - Accreditation is a demanding process. We have had thorough reviews, assessments, and visits to make sure we are doing things the in the best ways. We build community - Accreditation boosts our inclusive participation efforts. Through this community, people are active members of the world around them. We value data - Accreditation helps us analyse and collect data. With that data, we can see the effectiveness of our supports in people’s lives. We embrace change - Accreditation means always improving. Quality is a journey, not a destination.



 It took two years of preparation, but we did it! We’re proud to say that we are meeting international support standards for disabled people. This accreditation has given the wider team confidence in how we deliver support services. Even so we can’t rest, because there are always opportunities to improve what we do. To maintain our accreditation we must improve constantly, and regularly report our improvements to CQL.

Community Living CE Marese McGee said

“I want to thank all the staff who worked on this, Specialist Support Workers, Managers and Leaders throughout the organisation, the people we support, their whānau and all our supporters who enabled this to happen. We are proud to be the first organisation in New Zealand to achieve this accreditation. This puts us in a great position going into the future of the disability sector in this country.”

For people supported and their whānau/families, we hope this accreditation offers you confidence in what we do even as we strive to improve. We know that through continuing to improve the quality of our service we will improve outcomes for the people we support.

More information about the accreditation process can be found online (https://c-q-l.org/accreditation).



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