Some of the best ideas in my life have not been born in conference rooms.
They have been born in places that feel more like the wide sweep of Montana and Idaho than fluorescent lights and folding tables — places where the wonder of brainstorming in natural settings opens something in us that agendas never quite can.
Picture this: a knotty pine lodge perched above a mountain river. The current is steady and insistent below us. Tall pines reaching skyward. A cup of hot coffee warms our hands on a cool mountain morning. Soon the warm sun will shine the light on conversations from talented employment professionals from around the country and even from a country from down under.
Later, the sunsets magnificently over the hilltops. A campfire-orange glow settles in as dusk turns dark. The air cools, but the spirit warms. Music led by Bob and Glenda drifts above the fire and into the forest. Ideas spark rise and float upward — brief, bright, and gone — except they are not gone at all. They land somewhere. They catch in our minds and hearts.
It was in a setting like that, surrounded by some of the best and brightest in the field of customized employment — people whose passion runs as high as the mountain tops themselves — that I first met Peter Smith from Australia’s Centre for Employment Research and Practice at the Best Go West Rendezvous hosted by Griffin Hammis, LLC.
Through the leadership and teaching of Cary Griffin, many of us believe that customized employment is not about fitting people into jobs.
It is about building work around a life.
The Conversation That Kept Returning
Over the years, Peter and I have stayed in touch. Across oceans. Across policy cycles. Across the shifting terrain of disability employment systems.
And the conversation kept circling back to one steady truth:
Families matter.
Not as bystanders.
Not as barriers.
But as co-architects.
Discovery
A core practice within Customized Employment — is meant to identify strengths, themes of interest, potential work and support needs in order to build meaningful employment pathways. Yet despite strong evidence that families influence employment outcomes, their role within Discovery has often remained informal, inconsistent, and largely untheorized.
That gap matters.
Because families carry narrative memory.
They hold history.
They understand patterns of strength that may never show up in an assessment.
And when that knowledge is not structured into practice, systems lose coherence.
From Intuition to Structure: The Family Discovery Model
Through his work at the Centre for Disability Employment Research and Practice, Peter has helped articulate a structured approach to family engagement within Discovery.
Drawing on the Equilibrium Systems Model of Employment (ESME), international literature, and applied community practice, the Family Discovery Model positions families not as emotional add-ons, but as system actors.
It gives language and structure to what many of us have lived instinctively.
Families contribute in tangible ways:
Narrative Building
Families help articulate strengths and interests across time. They recognize themes, early passions, overlooked competencies, and environmental conditions that allow someone to thrive.
Network Mapping
Families often hold relational capital — connections to neighbors, business owners, faith communities, extended networks — that can expand opportunity when intentionally mapped.
Collaborative Reflection
Structured family involvement supports shared reflection between the individual, professionals, and family members — improving alignment between goals, services, and lived realities.
This is not sentimental work.
- It strengthens employment planning.
- It improves fidelity to the principles of Customized Employment.
- It supports transitions from school to work.
- It assists movement away from segregated settings.
- It builds viable pathways for individuals with complex support needs.
It is scalable. And it is needed.
The Exchange Across Oceans
Peter did not come from Australia simply to learn a model.
We have exchanged ideas.
We have compared implementation across communities — rural and urban, well-resourced and stretched thin. We have shared stories about families stepping forward, professionals recalibrating, and individuals discovering strengths that had long been underestimated.
Our conversations have been about how Customized Employment lives in real systems — how it bends, adapts, strengthens, and sometimes struggles amid policy pressures and the constant turnover of job coaches and employment specialists.
We have built on what we learned from one another. We have refined how family engagement can be structured without overshadowing the individual. We have examined how co-production theory translates into day-to-day practice.
That is how a field matures.
Not through imitation — but through thoughtful exchange.
The Family Discovery Model reflects that evolution. It operationalizes family involvement in a way that strengthens system coherence while preserving the individual’s central voice.
It moves family engagement from informal influence to intentional practice.
Why This Resonates in Our Home
In our home, Customized Employment has never been theoretical.
It has been steady as a river and sometimes as unpredictable as one.
Mikelle and I have worked as a team around her employment — her business, her creativity, her voice, her confidence. We have navigated when to step forward and when to step back. We have learned that partnership is not control. It is collaboration.
And in a system where employment specialists may change, job coaches may rotate, and continuity can be fragile, family engagement becomes stabilizing.
Peter’s structured work affirms what we have experienced:
When families are embedded thoughtfully within Discovery, employment planning becomes stronger, more aligned, and more sustainable.
It becomes relational and strategic at the same time.
It becomes resilient.
The Work Going Forward
We are in uncertain times. Funding shifts. Workforce instability. Policy recalibration.
But families remain; they carry the memories and have a vision — which can be expanded if nurtured. And, families carry stubborn hope and are protective beyond what systems can understand.
If Customized Employment is to remain true to its origins — discovery, dignity, personalization — then family engagement cannot remain vague.
It must be intentional, structured in our approach, and be co-produced with the individual, the family, and the employment specialist.
This can be difficult for employment providers when staffing turns over, and institutional memory disappears. Fortunately, families often provide the continuity that keeps the vision intact.
Mikelle said during our conversation, “I sell bracelets,” as she waved a selection of her newest bracelets in front of the camera.
That is a spark.
And when families, professionals, and individuals gather around the same fire or kitchen table — when passion runs as high as the mountain tops and steady as the river below the lodge — those sparks rise farther than we imagine.
Across states.
Across oceans.
Across generations.
And like a river that keeps carving its path long after we leave the lodge, this work continues — shaped by exchange, strengthened by partnership, and sustained by those willing to tend the fire together.
That is the future of Customized Employment.
And I am grateful to be walking it alongside colleagues — and friends — who keep the sparks of innovation rising.