Community Access Program:
Our Community Access Program provides social skills development, skill extension programs and community access programs for over 55 adults with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities who are unable to work, to assist them to live in and be part of their communities. Activities in these programs are chosen to promote interaction, socialisation and development of relationships, independence, dignity, self worth, self-esteem and individual choice. They provide fun, relaxation, stimulation and therapeutic benefits while targeting personal, social and daily living skills
Approximately 35 people with an intellectual disability who currently access our Day Service programs would benefit from this project immediately, but it would also allow us to extend the service to others in the community to satisfy a great unmet need. By ensuring our long term tenure, the project would allow us to channel more funds into service growth, development and improvement of this and other services, thereby extending its benefit far beyond this immediate impact.
Partnership arrangements such as this also facilitate our goal of increasing community awareness, acceptance and inclusion of people with an intellectual disability, an effect we believe benefits both those people and the community around them. In addition, the local community will benefit from having a now unusable eyesore restored into a vibrant, active community service which will encourage community and volunteer participation. We look forward to working together, for example, with the local volunteer Landcare Group in restoring the landscape of the site. Our own Employment Service runs a gardening and maintenance service employing a number of our clients and they are looking forward to assisting with this, along with our Community Network Group (parents, siblings and other interested supporters) and our corporate and individual volunteers who all rally together to support the Home's endeavours.
The Need for the new purpose-modified premises:
Our Community Access Programme desperately needs to find a new home for some of our Day Service programmes as they are currently spread over a number of smaller sites that are inadequate to their needs. We are currently completing an expression of interest with the local Ku-ring-gai Council regarding a partnership arrangement in which they will provide us with a long-term, reduced rent lease over a Council owned property and we will carry out the necessary upgrading and modifications to enable us to provide this vital community service.
Most of the funding received by the Home is in the form of "block funding" for accommodation and "all of life" care. This means that we receive no direct funding to run Day Service programs for those people who are unable to work. We originally instituted such Community Access programs for the clients who lived in our institutional accommodation from within our own budget because we believed that they were essential to the development and dignity of our clients. We continue to maintain this view and to strive for these programs to be meaningful opportunities for skills and relationship development, not merely "day care for adults".
People using Day Service programs by definition have moderate to very high support needs. For a service to engage these clients in any meaningful way, staffing levels need to be high and appropriate, specialist equipment (such as lifting slings, change tables, wheelchair-modified vehicles etc) needs to be provided. To maintain a quality service cost effectively then, the best expense for us to minimise is the cost of the premises where the service operates. Our services currently operate out of premises rented on the open rental market (and therefore subject to its vagaries) and modified for our special needs at our own (considerable) expense. We receive no government funding whatsoever for this purpose.
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