PADDLE Program

01/09/2026

Congrats to Monique R for being the first 2026 Cash Calendar winner of $100!
Calendar # 0820

01/07/2026

🎉 Only 32 Cash Calendars Left for 2026! 🎉

Don’t miss your chance to support The PADDLE Program and be entered to win cash prizes all year long! 💸📅
We’re down to just 32 calendars, and once they’re gone — they’re gone!

👉 Purchase yours here: https://www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/121422

Every calendar sold helps support the amazing individuals we serve, and we truly couldn’t do it without you.
💙 Your support means so much to us

01/05/2026

The last cash calendar winners of 2025 are:
Rhonda G $100 calendar #00535
Dave G $175
Calendar #00510

01/03/2026

12/31/2025

❤️❤️❤️🙏🙏

For people with intellectual disabilities loneliness doesn’t live in buildings. It lives in the absence of relationship.

In institutions, people were surrounded by staff. In apartments, people are often surrounded by silence. Neither creates community. Neither creates friendship. Both can leave a person unseen, unmissed, and unknown.

What makes a place human is not its size. For some people we replaced one kind of isolation with another and called it progress.

Without friendship, a home becomes a holding place.

Our work, the real work, is helping people live connected instead of managed. Connected to neighbours. Connected to familiar places. Connected to people who show up as friends in your life because they want to, not because they are paid to.

That is why friendship matters more than housing. That is why one of the most important training modules for direct support professionals is, without a doubt, the Open Future Learning module: Building Friendships and Community.

Because this module offers a full range of practical strategies support workers can use, not only to help people build friendships and community, but to sustain them over time.

Are you a director of training and do you want to see how Open Future Learning can work for your team? Link to demo: https://www.openfuturelearning.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=login.RequestDemo

P.S. Open Future is now SCORM compliant. Use our courses on any LMS!
..

ID: Drawing shows a building with a lot of windows. All of the windows are black showing no lights on inside. There is a sign on top of the building that reads "Institution" - next to the building is a man in a suit with his arm pointing to the building - a speech bubble from the man says "We closed all of the institutions."

Under the above is a replica of the building, this time one light is on in one of the windows of the building to indicate that one person is at home. The sign on top of the building reads "Apartments" next to the building is a man sat in a wheelchair - a speech bubble from the man says "Did you?"

Small text along the bottom of the image reads: "An institution isn't a building."
..

Art by

12/21/2025

I said how relieved I was and said, “You handled that well.”

“I didn’t handle anything,” she said. “He did. He told me what he needed.”

She said she believed him, which made me think not everyone did.

It’s too easy to forget that the person in front of us has been living in their body far longer than we have been supporting it.

The real experts on a person’s life are the people themselves.
..

ID: Image shows two staff restraining someone on the floor. Text reads: He wasn't escalating. He was communicating.

I was visiting a short-term assessment unit for people with intellectual disabilities, one of those places where “short term” often quietly becomes permanent.

It was late afternoon, dinner was coming, and he was pacing the room, hands moving fast. I overheard a staff member say he was “escalating.” I saw two others standing close to him, discussing his restraint procedure. I feared the worst.

But one member of staff stood to one side, close enough to be present, far enough not to crowd him. She told the other two staff to go to another part of the home.

Moments later, he stopped pacing and looked at that staff member. “Too loud,” he said. Just two words. Not aggressive. Just honest. She asked him what would help. He pointed to the back door. They went outside, and I followed. The air was cooler. His shoulders dropped. His hands slowed. The crisis everyone was preparing for quietly dissolved.

After he wandered back in, she told me she had learned something important from him over time. When his hands moved like that, he was trying to tell you something. She had learned this by paying attention, by being with him, by letting him lead through his own warning signs.

I said how relieved I was and said, “You handled that well.”
“I didn’t handle anything,” she said. “He did. He told me what he needed.”

She said she believed him, which made me think not everyone did.

It’s too easy to forget that the person in front of us has been living in their body far longer than we have been supporting it.

The real experts on a person’s life are the people themselves.
..

ID: Image shows two staff restraining someone on the floor. Text reads: He wasn't escalating. He was communicating.

12/19/2025

💞💞💞Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. See you in January.

Our Elf on the Shelf Rascal was happy to present the PADDLE Program with a Christmas donation! 🎄✨
This is just one of the many ways we’re putting your donations to work right here in our community

12/19/2025

Having fun opening all the gifts from our Amazon wish list! Thank you everyone who made this happen 💚

12/18/2025

Great story of lived experience about lack of day supports. Worth the watch 👀👀

To view the story, search 'CTV News Ottawa adult disability.' Notably, approximately 53,000 Ontarians, comparable to the population of North Bay, are awaiting basic life necessities.

12/18/2025

You may have missed this clarification.

❤️Thank you for taking the time to understand the core issues.

12/18/2025

Yesterday, some of the members of the Choir came to PADDLE to drop off a donation! We are so very grateful for everything the Rock Choir has done for our program! 💚💚💚💚

12/18/2025

We were so busy with the Christmas Tea yesterday we forgot to post December 17th Cash Calendar winner! Congrats to Debbie M calendar # 00566! You won $300!