BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Its name, evidently, is not only a watchword for the hope it offers disabled clients, but one it also applies to its own trendsetting inventiveness.

“For years, direct-care staff has been overlooked and undervalued. So we wanted to create an enhanced career track for these folks to add value to their positions,” Michael Hardesty, president of Flying Colors of Success Inc., said of service to the disabled and of a local combined-agency leadership program that his organization helped form.

In existence since 1991, Flying Colors of Success offers around-the-clock residential support services at 11 community-based Carroll and Baltimore County homes to 33 Maryland adults with developmental disabilities. The group has a $2.5 million budget and 74 employees.

During daytime hours, however, many of the Westminster-based nonprofit’s residents use the vocational, therapeutic or respite services of its three sister agencies — The Arc of Carroll County, Change Inc., and Target Community and Educational Services Inc. — in the 5-year-old leadership consortium.

“The four [CEOs] meet once a month for lunch,” Hardesty said, “and, even though technically we’re competitors, we brainstorm and share information — and help each other out. And we came up with this [idea for a] leadership academy. ... It’s unique in the state, and I believe it’s unique in the nation.”

Called FACT, an acronym of the four Carroll County agencies’ names, the informal institute offers standout employees from each organization off-site vocational training — in team-building, related disability familiarization and state resources orientation — one day a month for eight months.

“We have a very wonderful working relationship not only with Flying Colors of Success but with the other partners in this training consortium,” said Kathy Menasche, senior director of work force and business development at Carroll County Community College. “Annually, we do training for the frontline people of these organizations.”

But Flying Colors is also the vanguard of home design for the disabled, Hardesty said.

“One of the things we’re proud of is we’ve begun to develop accessible housing — what architects call ‘universal design’ — for residents,” he said.

Hardesty said this trendsetting emphasis on accommodating aging within disabled populations eliminates domestic encumbrances for special-care residents and is now incorporated into two of his 11 homes.

“They’re an excellent organization,” Richard Glaser, CEO of Change Inc., said of his partner nonprofit. “We’re very pleased to work with them.”