Introducing After I’m Gone, The Arc’s Future Planning Initiative

We’re excited to share the official launch of After I’m Gone, a new initiative from The Arc of Massachusetts designed for aging caregivers concerned about future care for their loved one with a disability.

This program brings together practical tools, meaningful conversation, and a growing community all focused on one essential question: what will happen after I’m gone?

Hear from Innovation Development Director Leo Sarkissian in this new video message.

Hi, it’s Leo Sarkissian with the After I’m Gone Project at The Arc of Massachusetts.

I’m thrilled to tell you about our launch and some of the elements or components of After I’m Gone.

First, I want to talk about our website. It’s a great guide. It has several sections, including public services, private services, a way for you to connect with others, a planning guide, material on successors. Check out the website: thearcofmass.org/future

The other component that I want to tell you about is the digital community on Facebook, and you can connect to that. We’re pretty pumped up about the kind of dialogue that happened in our pilot workshops, and I don’t see why that won’t continue in the Facebook community and future training sessions.

We also have a combination of free and paid-for services. Our workshops and the Future Planning Guide will have a fee, and that’s to help sustain the program. But complementing each of those will be free offerings. For example, for the Guide, there is an alternative summary of the guide that you can download for free. For the workshops, which will be for a fee, you can attend webinars that will track some of the same issues as in the workshops.

A main area of how our program is different is that we focus on the process of identifying the successor. How do you talk to your successor caregiver or coach? Who’s taking your place? All while keeping the person with the disability as part of that. So that is going to be a key piece that we also have information for on the website.

We hope to tie in some technological aspects. We’re still studying some options. It’s fast-moving, AI, and we want to make the right investment for us and for you.

As for unfinished business, we’ve got more workshops we want to develop, and in working with committee members, we’re looking at a number of areas. And finally, expanding the scope of people who work in this field as care managers. Special thanks to John Nadworny for working on that, and we have more work ahead.

So stay tuned and connected to us. We want to make sure everybody is working to address what will happen after I’m gone.

After I’m Gone Homepage

Visit thearcofmass.org/future to access dozens of pages of information on Public Resources, Private Resources, Planning and Tools, and Connecting with The Arc.

Future Planning Guide

We have developed the Future Planning Guide, a fillable PDF document, to support families and caregivers to guide them in planning conversations and to share information with partners and successors.

The guide contains seven key sections, including: information about the family/individual, work and home, supporting independence in adult life, health and medical information, legal and financial information, future support details, and sharing and maintaining your future plan.

Learn more about the guide here.

After I’m Gone Digital Community

The After I’m Gone Digital Community is a place to connect caregivers and loved ones from across Massachusetts navigating future planning for their adult children with intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism.

This private group seeks to provide a safe space to ask and answer questions, connect to community and resources, and learn up-to-date information on After I’m Gone workshops, webinars, and tools for successor planning.

Join the community here.

After I’m Gone: Program Launch and Updates Webinar Replay

Join The Arc of Massachusetts for a webinar introducing the full launch of our After I’m Gone program. Innovation Development Director Leo Sarkissian will provide updates on the program, including an introduction of upcoming workshop series, webinars, The Arc’s Future Planning Guide, and an interactive online community.

We know that it’s hard to think of the future when you’re busy in the present. However, if you begin now, make changes gradually, and prepare, you can ease the transition. There is no better way to change the future than to plan for it.