Penn-Mar Consulting and TransCen Awarded $150,000 Contract to Provide Technical Assistance to Five Community Service Providers - Penn-Mar

Penn-Mar Consulting and TransCen Awarded $150,000 Contract to Provide Technical Assistance to Five Community Service Providers

Posted on June 23, 2021

By Michael F. Shriver, Director Penn-Mar Consulting Kevin Walker, Penn-Mar Consulting, Business Development Director

Those of us working at the Consulting arm of Penn-Mar Human Services are delighted to report that we, and our partner TransCen, were recently awarded a $150,000 contract from The Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council (Council) to provide technical assistance to five community service providers licensed, certified, or approved by the Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA).

The five community service providers selected by the Council to participate include:

  • The Chesapeake Center – Talbot County
  • Langton Green – Anne Arundel County
  • Star Community, Inc. – Washington County
  • Chimes Maryland – Baltimore City
  • Rock Creek Foundation – Montgomery County

The objective of the program is to help these providers reimagine, refocus, and rebuild their business and service models during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the call came in from a Council representative to tell us we were selected from a group of five other proposal participants, three specific reasons were cited for why our recommendations were the strongest of all the entries:

  • Our approach was the most organized;
  • It held the providers most accountable;
  • It suggested a path to help providers go through the process and be accountable for its execution.

Specifically, Penn-Mar and TransCen are being tasked with supporting providers to transform service delivery models and business practices, recover and rebuild as needed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and identify effective strategies that can be replicated.

Through our partnership, TransCen and Penn-Mar staff will bring well over 25 years of experience providing organizational change and provider transformation training in more than 17 states (including Maryland), and long-range provider transformation process both at the planning, organizational, community based outcome and staff development level.

The goal of this initiative is to ensure that people with developmental disabilities receive services in a seamless, individualized, and sustainable way, whether they are at home, on-site with a provider, or in the community.

Penn-Mar Human Services and TransCen have a long history of collaboration and training focused on a replicable community based service supports and business model.

TransCen, Inc., is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving education and employment success of youth and young adults with disabilities. Their work is driven by the belief that employment and active community participation are attainable for all individuals, regardless of disability or other perceived barriers to employment.

We actually engaged the organization back in 2009 to help us transform Penn-Mar’s employment program which today is recognized as one of the most innovative in our industry.

So we have come full circle and believe that our partnership differentiated us in the review process by combining TransCen’s strengths as a well-respected national training organization with a wide breadth of successful current and past initiatives, combined with Penn-Mar’s recognition as a forward-thinking practitioner with proven models of transformative success creating and implementing bold person-driven, community-based supports.

When this initiative is completed in September 2022, Penn-Mar and TransCen will be sharing all of our findings and best practices with other human services organizations out there.

Collaboration is one of Penn-Mar’s most important core values and we have shown time and time again how our successes from continuing innovation have benefited the human services community as a whole.

And that, in a nutshell, is the mission of Penn-Mar’s Consulting Group: to facilitate change by sharing innovative approaches which connect organizations that serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to best practices that support a life well-lived for all people, regardless of ability.

Penn-Mar brings over 100 years of multi-disciplinary leadership experience to organizations looking to take a bold step forward and are eager to work with President Laura Owens, Ph. D., and her team at TransCen to show them how to do just that.


This project was supported, in part by grant number CFDA 93.630, from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20201. Grantees undertaking projects with government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official ACL policy.
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