Forever Home

The vision for a permanent location began more than 8 years ago to address the challenges of the ongoing shifts and adjustments we have had to make for all ability levels. As programs grow and develop, the need for a permanent location to expand and create a safe, accessible space is more apparent than ever! We call this vision, our Forever Home!

Why is it needed: Consistency and quality space that children and adults with developmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities will have consistency and ability to dream to create additional programs to meet individual needs and passions.

We are very excited to start making a big move to a “Forever Home” for the needs of our individuals, families, and all our wonderful employees. We are looking for a more functional space and safe environment. To get the perfect space and dream of a forever home, would set our participants up for great success of the highest quality of life possible. This space would set all of the staff up to lead successful programs, have quality therapy sessions, and have everything they need to provide above and beyond quality care. 

Forever Home Vision:

• Sensory rooms for individuals to take a break, improve independence in emotional and physical regulation, expand visual, auditory and tactile processing skills, and have a therapeutic area to develop coping strategies.  
• 2 indoor gym areas: one for both children and adults to have access to recreation activities and to participate in physical activities that can be designed and adapted for the population to develop motor skills, knowledge, and behaviors for physical activity and physical fitness  
• Simulation training for the real world by creating immersive, relatable scenarios to enable learners to apply skills and knowledge easily and directly in their daily roles and tasks  
• Classroom space to provide individual and group learning through alternative educational programming and behavior sessions. This environment is one of the most important factors affecting student learning and will provide relevant content, clear learning goals and feedback, opportunities to build social skills, and strategies to help students succeed.  
• Social skills area (emotional skills can help students set goals for themselves and build positive relationships with peers. They can also learn how to express themselves). 
• Outside Garden and recreation area to provide opportunities to have access to an enjoyable space for some fresh air, develop skills for planting and gardening and have an adaptive play area for all ages.  Grass area would be amazing to play games, take walks, take breaks, etc 
• Expand our cooking club program with a commercial-style kitchen to build independent and functional life skills as well as learn and build habits around kitchen safety and cleanliness.  
• Create a learning room for our families and host trainings to help and guide as children and adults move through life’s transitional periods.   
• Expand existing programs such as adding additional speech therapy rooms, add larger and more functional pre-school age classrooms and add individual adult therapy rooms for specific training. 
• Begin new programs such as an adult woodworking shop, transition-age program, occupational therapy, adding counseling and social group programs combining behavioral, emotional, and mental health programming.
• Exterior would need multiple wheelchair accessibility entrances/exits. 
• An abundant number of windows with natural light beaming through for mental and physical benefits. 
• Parking and drop off area for clients.
• An Intake room would help with employee, client, and visitor tracking. 
• Employee private office space. 
• Employee lounge to take a break that can also be used for formal copy/work room for laminating, shredding, employee mailboxes and dedicated work room for staff with extra computers, materials, & has break out offices for meetings to take place.  
• Large and small conference rooms. Around two training rooms solely used for training (orientation, med/cpr/first aid/delegation) A FBA room. It would be extremely helpful for these training rooms or one to have two way glass and a microphone system so people could hear and see what is going on in the room but the people in the room can’t see out. 
• Large accessible bathrooms (at least 1 to have our formal changing room) full bathroom with shower. LARGE KITCHEN (2 stoves), Prep station, teaching station, Adult options with multiple stations for purposeful work; dishwasher, mock bedroom, washer/dryer for LWP. 
• Woodworking shop class or something in this direction for more space to try something like this for stimulation.
• AND SO MUCH MORE!!!

We also want to ensure that this Forever Home can be the brighter future for so many! The overall goal is to ensure that ALL families have the opportunity for the best quality of life possible. We want to be able to partner with many other agencies to be apart of this future! We want to have space for other agencies to be in a network together... working together!

Your generous individual donations, gifts, and sponsorships will help provide more than just a building, it will provide a future, it will provide a safe and functional space for those families and individuals we serve. In order to expand on the best quality of services for our clients and families, we need more functional space, we need safe outside space for our clients to enjoy and with more functional outdoor space we can expand on outdoor activities and programs. We will need windows for our child’s program classrooms. This worthwhile cause will have such a great positive impact on the sessions, programs and the dedicated staff who care so much for our loved ones.

Mission

We are committed to create endless opportunities for families and individuals impacted by intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities.

Vision

Our vision is a community that embraces those impacted by intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities in daily life; a community where all people support each other to reach their highest quality of life possible.

Our goal is to provide individuals and families the necessary resources that will:

• Ensure continuation of therapeutic and supportive services
• Secure access to specialized programs not or partially covered by other sources
• Aid with emergency or crisis situations
• Furnish assistive technologies to improve quality of life
• Connect people with approved agencies to secure quality care

Fundraising is how we reach our goals and live out our mission. Individual contributions, recurring donations, fundraising events, online campaigns, cultivating relationships with our community, and securing grant funding are all avenues we utilize to provide the often life-changing financial support our foundation exists to provide.  Relying on our community to help those in need in turn promotes awareness and education about our mission and the people we serve.