Janet Klees has been involved in the lives of people with disabilities, their families, and allies in community for over 30 years. For 21 years, until 2014, was coordinator with the family-governed Deohaeko Support Network - almost from its beginnings when families designed and built a 105-unit housing co-operative which seven of their sons and daughters with disabilities now call home, and from which they live typical and full lives in community.

Currently, she is Executive Director for the Durham Family Resources and Support which is a values-based organization in Ontario, Canada that supports the capacity of families to design and implement good lives in neighbourhood and community for and with their sons and daughters.

She is the author of three books which are directly rooted in the Deohaeko experience, (We Come Bearing Gifts; Our Presence has Roots; Deohaeko Decades) and which are now sold around the world.

Janet is known for her work on identifying and teaching a practical strategy, Building A Context For Relationship, that is able to bring relationship, roles and places of belonging into the lives of people; her work on the support role as a unique and often poorly understood or executed; her development of the family group model underpinned by a collaborative coordinator; her support of family leadership initiatives, and her focus on shared decision making - all within a coherent framework of principled decision-making.

Check out Janet speaking about relationship building here.