Research 

As already noted, Michael Kendrick has done much of the work to date on family governance, but a review of literature finds only a small number of family-governed projects studied or referred to in research journals and publications found in the community living field. There are brief mentions of collective models within the literature on Individualized Funding  (Maglajlic et al, 2000; Ridley & Jones, 2002; Stainton, 2002), described by Hall (2009) in the following way:

“The responsibility for managing the care, the carers and the funding is therefore shared by the group and, just as importantly, the responsibility for the provision of care is maintained at the collective level, better ensuring regulation and quality (and employment rights for personal assistants), and allowing the development of new services and community-based resources” (Hall, 2009, p.51).

The majority of family-governed groups fall under the second category of those listed from the CLBC Think Tank document – incorporated organizations governed by families or multi-stakeholder groups in which family members hold a majority (CLBC, 2009).  Indeed, many existing non-profit service agencies in the community living field were formed as a result of families’ collective efforts, though over time, for most, organizational leadership and governance has shifted to professionals and multi-stakeholder Boards of Directors. VCC is a model that pools resources – in the form of non-profit society — and that remains governed entirely by families.