Habilitation programs improve for people with disabilities

HERMON – Community Works, an OHI program, celebrated its first year July 1 as a work program for people with developmental disabilities in which all participants are employed outside the confines of a sheltered workshop. Officials of the program will hold a small celebration during OHI’s annual weeklong trip to Camp Tall Pines in Poland.

Traditionally, day habilitation programs, or day programs, for people with developmental disabilities have consisted of monotonous work in an isolated, sheltered workshop. When most day programs were designed – 20 years ago in the case of OHI’s day program – experts believed the people served by those programs could not work in a “normal” setting because of their challenging behaviors and low cognitive abilities. Most programs were designed to control the impact of those behaviors by isolating people into one setting, giving them the opportunity to make a small amount of money doing piecework.

Gradually, those programs evolved to focus on learning skills as well as earning money and keeping people occupied, but the isolation remained.

Although people with developmental disabilities were given the opportunity to socialize with others with disabilities, they were rarely given the opportunity to truly be a part of the greater community.

Eight years ago, a woman named Madeline was one of the first people supported by OHI to begin to work outside the walls of the sheltered workshop. When she left Pineland Center in 1980 and came to what was then Opportunity Housing Incorporated, Pineland staff told Bonnie Brooks, OHI’s president and chief executive officer, that Madeline would never be able to function outside an institutional setting.

Because some of the environmental factors at the institution, it was difficult for her to succeed in a traditional day program, even though she was successful in the community in other aspects of her life.

Madeline has been working since 1995 as a shredder of confidential documents for the law firm Eaton Peabody. Madeline’s workspace on the sixth floor of the Fleet Building is evidence of her abilities and Madeline is quick to tell you what she has learned. She recently accomplished closing small metal fasteners on report binders.

She also has learned to read and write numbers while using the scale to calculate her production-based earnings and to answer the telephone in her workspace and take messages, to tie the bags of shredding and stack them appropriately, and to match the multiple machinery cords with their proper machines.

Madeline’s progress was a motivator for change because it was realized that many could be served in this way. Madeline and others now add to the economy with their spending power and tax dollars. Local business owners also have found it good for business.

Bill Buckley, president of Coffee News USA, has employed some of his staff through Community Works for almost a year.

“We employ folks with disabilities from OHI’s Community Works Program in Brewer to do our deliveries for two of our four Bangor area editions of Coffee News,” he said. “The Bangor community is beginning to pick up on our effective employment of folks with disabilities and we are getting tremendous feedback in support of our hiring of people with disabilities to do our deliveries. It is great for business and very gratifying.”

Teresa Daly, community inclusion coordinator at Community Works said, “It is good to hear the positive feedback that Bill has received. The Friday delivery of the Coffee News continues to be a preferred job at Community Works, I think mainly due to the acceptance and friendships that have formed between the people delivering the paper and the employees and owners of the businesses to which they deliver.”

Other businesses in the Bangor area benefiting from services of the Community Works program include the Bangor Humane Society, Pinetree Landfill, Bangor Nursing and Rehab Center, Brogue Financial, Maine Savings Bank, Brewer Parks and Recreation, and the City of Bangor.

OHI’s motto is “everything is possible,” and the success found in its Community Works program is an excellent example of its truth.

The “working without walls” concept has been accepted for presentation at the regional conference of the American Association on Mental Retardation in October. It is hoped that the concept will form a trend and that others will discover that for people with disabilities, working without walls does work.

Those interested in hiring people with disabilities may call Paul Mosley at 989-4007, Ext. 221.

Bev Uhlenhake is director of development for OHI.