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I work for a company that helps people with developmental disabilities (autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, etc) become more independent in their daily lives. Recently, one of our clients successfully earned her vet tech certification. She wants to help sick animals, especially cats. This is a girl who could barely write her own name when we started working with her. Now, she's going places. Makes all the hard work worth it.
I used to work in that same space too and that was always something I aspired for, even if it didn’t seem feasible.
I got a bit irritated with one of the workers who was having a meeting with one of my clients. The client was an older lady in her late 50’s and she was telling us how she wanted to get actual employment outside of our program. Our program was “vocational training” and only for 2 hours each day of actual work. Her worker told her something along the lines of being “realistic”, but I couldn’t stand that.
Sure, she likely never will because of her age and her disabilities, but I’ll be damned if I don’t support her can-do attitude and make sure we give it the best shot we can. I’d rather have that spirit and encourage it than encourage someone to stay down and out and never give it a try.
IIRC, Thomas Edison was considered slow/addled. But with the right support…
Screw realistic. It might take a hundred false starts, but hope is literally all any of us have. Thank you for doing work that many of us just aren’t cut out for, and for making a difference.
What type of business is this, say if I was trying to find a similar one in my area?
The state I live in has Medicaid waivers that pay (with tax dollars) for people who have developmental disabilities to get home-based help. So basically we send a Direct Support Professional (DSP) to the person's home for a set number of hours each week, and they work on goals with that person. Goals can be things like learning to cook for themselves, working on their social skills, going out in the community to find hobbies, enrolling in classes, etc, etc, etc. We pay the DSP by the hour, and then Medicaid reimburses our company. So it's free for the person/family who needs our services. I'm pretty sure that most states in the US have waivers like this set up. It's called the Community Living Supports Waiver in my state. If you live in the US, you can just look up Medicaid waivers in your state, and it should pull up companies like the one I work for. Unfortunately, I've found that not a lot of people know about the waivers, including families and individuals who could really use them.
I love that you’re making a difference in both a social and a tangible way. We write off far too many people because it’s just too difficult to integrate them, basically. Yes, more complex than that, but…
Thank you for what you do.