NOIRE

A Recognition
Spent some time in Alaska this past week — and as much as I'm here for the mountains, my thoughts kept returning to the people who do our work in this state.

In most of the country, we call it Support Coordination. In Alaska, it goes by Care Coordination, and the job entails a level of complexity most of the Lower 48 will never see. Care Coordinators here serve participants on the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), Adults with Physical and Developmental Disabilities (ISW), Alaskans Living Independently (ALI), (APDD), and Children with Complex Medical Conditions (CCMC) waivers across communities separated by mountains, water, and weather. Many work in partnership with Tribal health systems. Some build support plans where the nearest provider is a flight away.

That is not support coordination as an administrative function. That is support coordination as continuous, relational presence across distance — exactly the practice NOIRE was founded to honor.

To Alaska's Care Coordinators: thank you. NOIRE sees you. Grateful for what you do here. Enjoying your beautiful state.

We keep trying to fix the people. But what if the system itself is broken?

For thirty years, human services has poured resources into training programs, performance reviews, and corrective action plans — all aimed at the frontline worker.
And still, the crisis deepens.

DSP turnover exceeding 40% annually. Support coordinators carrying caseloads no human being can manage. Skilled, dedicated people leaving a field they love — not because they burned out, but because the structure made doing the right thing impossible.
Here's what the research is telling us:
The problem was never the people.
It was the architecture.

We've imported industrial-era organizational structures — built for factories, not for human care — and asked deeply relational work to happen inside them. The result is what scholars call moral distress: the specific injury of knowing exactly what would help someone, and being blocked by policy, protocol, or paperwork from doing it.
That's not burnout. That's something deeper. And it doesn't get better with another training.

Three things we can no longer ignore:
→ The "bad employee" narrative protects broken systems by keeping the spotlight on individuals.
→ Most of what compliance-heavy organizations do is manage the failures their own structure created — not actually serve people.
→ There are proven alternatives. The Buurtzorg model — self-managed teams, no middle management, full clinical authority at the frontline — consistently outperforms traditional structures in outcomes, retention, and cost.

The practitioners giving everything they have are not the problem.
They never were.
Beyond Good Intentions — a new research brief from NOIRE — is coming soon. If you work in human services, lead an organization, or care about the people this system is supposed to serve, this one is for you.

More documentation won't get you there.
More audits won't get you there.
More compliance checklists won't get you there.

Person-centered care is not a compliance outcome. It's a relational one.

It requires time, trust, professional judgment, and organizational cultures that actually value human connection — not just ones that measure it.

The IDD system has spent decades trying to standardize its way to individualization. That contradiction is at the heart of what NOIRE exists to address.

Here's something our research keeps confirming:

Support coordinators — the people doing the work every single day — already know what's broken.

They feel it in impossible caseloads. They see it in planning processes that serve the system instead of the person. They carry it home at night.

Meaningful social change in IDD services doesn't begin with outside experts or top-down mandates. It begins with listening — really listening — to the people closest to the work.

Center the Support Coordinators' voice. Because transformation that doesn't include the people it's supposed to help isn't transformation. It's just rearranging the furniture.

Robots are entering care settings. Are we asking the right questions?

NOIRE's ARCH Center (Applied Robotics in Complex Human Systems) is conducting the field's most values-grounded examination of socially assistive robotics in IDD services — centering dignity, authentic relationship, and the voices of people with IDD in every research question.

Technology should serve human flourishing. Not replace it.

Support coordination is not case management. The distinction matters — and too few systems take it seriously.

Support coordinators don't manage cases. They build relationships, navigate complex systems, advocate for self-determination, and serve as the connective tissue between people with IDD and the services that shape their lives.

At NOIRE, elevating this distinction is foundational to everything we do.

Support Coordinators are at the center of everything.

They carry some of the heaviest relational and systemic loads in human services — yet remain among the least studied, least supported, and least recognized professionals in the IDD field.

NOIRE's research is changing that. Our national research agenda is built around the lived experiences of support coordinators — because you cannot transform what you refuse to see.

Have you ever felt like the system is working against you? The conversation continues with some truths about support coordination.

Join us for Episode 2 of Connecting Coffee ☕ — a real conversation for support coordinators, by people who get it.

Listen now on Spotify-https://open.spotify.com/episode/50i1VZjeP3HUZ3oJ11gZZA?si=UfZDjlNLSOGhu0arnrxXCw

Have you ever felt like the system is working against you — not because of anything you did, but because it was never designed for your work?

That's exactly what we get into in Episode 1 of Connecting Coffee ☕ — a real conversation for support coordinators, by people who get it.

Listen now on Spotify-https://open.spotify.com/episode/7IqKA304rMWqXtLYfvqFBb?si=XwvMect9TvWSl0g5D3Vdow

Big ideas. No shortcuts.

Episode 1 of Leverage Points ⚙️ takes on the Incompatibility Thesis — the theoretical foundation of everything NOIRE does. If you're a researcher, organizational leader, or serious field thinker, this one belongs in your queue.

Listen on Spotify →
https://open.spotify.com/episode/08idYhCXHjws18kWcwdDAR?si=8mUNMGMSTt2n-zZEqVTOHw

Incompatibility Part 1-Diagnosing the Architecture Leverage Points · Episode