Introducing: My Life, My Way

posted on Tuesday, January 31, 2023

As of February 1, our day habilitation service will begin transitioning into an integrated community experience called My Life, My Way - offered through our supported community living service.

This integrated community experience will enhance opportunities to become more person-centered by...

• Offering offer more choice at more desirable times (day, night, weekends)
• Providing staff consistency; our integration specialists can choose to provide a very similar community experience as they have been doing but now focusing on one site in particular  
• Aligning with industry best-practices, our vision and our mission 

Out of struggle comes innovation.
Our Day Hab program has consistently been a leader in innovative services. In 2015 our program moved out of a facility and became a program "without walls" meaning our services were provided 100% in the community and moved us one step closer to our vision for the future. 

The pandemic challenged this concept. While our services stayed open, where we could safely go in the community drastically shrank. We found our groups spending more time in a facility than we'd like. This year, as we looked to return to our pre-pandemic service model, we found significant barriers.

Our Day Habilitation program was seeing critical staffing shortages. We have half the staff we need to deliver the service and we don't see nearly the applicant traffic we do with our new 12 hours shift positions. Beyond the burnout we risk with staff, this also increases group size, increases safety concerns, and keeps groups more facility bound. 

From the perspective of the majority of persons served and their families, this transition will get us back to the service they chose pre-pandemic.

What Does An Integrated Community Experience Look Like?

• A person’s home will be the start/stop location, group sizes will be smaller, activity options will be exponentially greater, and as we're able to expand times of the day/days of the week we offer.
   
• The people we support will still have choice in who they choose to spend their day with and what activities they would like to take part in - the possibilities are endless!
   
• Our integration specialists can choose to provide a very similar community experience as they do today floating between sites or can choose to take an open front/back half position and focus on one site in particular while still focusing on an enhanced community experience.

As we've piloted this concept with persons served we have received very positive feedback. In fact, one of our EPI board members who was a part of the pilot enthusiastically voiced praise for the proposal and even seconded the motion. 

We are excited to continue to share the progress with you as this program develops. Click here for a flyer with more information.