Adults with special needs chase dreams
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - There's an old nursing home on the northeast side that today is full of life and dreams and possibilities.
Tucked back off the road, it's a home away from home for hundreds of developmentally and intellectually disabled adults, ages 18 to 80, who come for therapeutic day programs, employment services and art classes.
Outside the Box is a place for these folks to work in small groups on social skills, communication, daily living, self-care, relationship-building, problem-solving, safety and a host of other skills.
For a population that too often is defined by others in terms of what they can't do, the nearly 300 individuals supported by Outside the Box are here to explore what they can do, what they want to do.
"You really can't compare us with anything else in the community," said David Martin, coordinator of day programming and therapeutic planning. "There's an energy about the place; you'll see what I'm talking about when you walk around."
He's not kidding. Everyone smiles here. They hug, dance and offer compliments freely. Staff and participants are on a first-name basis. Those who aren't involved in group sessions are gathered in a community room for Dance Party Friday. It's loud, chaotic and happy.
"I call it the happiest place on Earth," says Kelly Hartman, who co-founded the nonprofit in 2008 as an outreach of her residential and behavioral support services business, Insights Consulting.
Her business is located in the Castleton area, but she jumps into her car and comes to Outside the Box when she needs a dose of happy.
"What makes us really different is we are really working toward seeing our folks' internal wealth," said Hartman, a behavioral consultant who started her career working in a group home in Muncie. Too often, she said, parents of those with developmental and intellectual challenges have been told to give up their dreams for their children.
"Why would you ever want to give up on a dream for anybody? It's part of humanity, evolving into who you are and who you want to be. Every day you come in here, that's really happening. Every day, it's lived here."
Katy Bird, executive director of Outside the Box, tells the story of a program participant who had a dream.
"His only dream from the time we met him five years ago was to work here," Bird said. "Like anyone preparing for a job, we worked on skill sets with him, he became a peer mentor in our day program, and now he's working in our after-school program."
The pilot after-school program is for younger teens and operates out of a church in Hamilton County.
For some, the career services component of Outside the Box might not be job placement, Martin explained. It might be learning basic skills, volunteering or continuing their education.
But the key here is the staff listens to what participants want.
"Our facilitators put their hearts and souls into this place and these people," said Martin. "It works because love is at the forefront. If you open your heart to transformation, transformation happens."
And not just for participants, he said.
"I am a different person because I am here. I'm a master's level clinician, and I choose to be here because this place creates change, and and we can extend that out into the community."
Hartman said when she founded Outside the Box, she wanted to offer more than what was currently available to those with disabilities. She's proud of the 4-1 ratio of participants to staff in programming, the peer-matching component that groups those with like interests and a curriculum based on psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which explores the stages of growth in humans.
"Most of our folks have never learned that they have any value or that they have the ability to give back, so we created a space where the energy is really empowering people to be their best selves," Hartman said.
Part of developing the whole person, Hartman and Bird say, is giving individuals the chance to do for others. Each year, the organization identifies 10 other nonprofits that it wants to build a relationship with and support in collaborative ways, including volunteering. Participants in the agency's art program, Studio OTB, create paintings in honor of the other nonprofits, then sell them during HeART for a Cause. Proceeds are given to those organizations.
Don Steffy, executive director of the Indianapolis Children's Choir and an Indianapolis Rotary Foundation board member, recently paid a visit to Outside the Box.
"OTB sounds fine on paper, but until you walk through the door, and you breathe in the need, you don't fully comprehend what OTB is about," he said. "The work they do is phenomenal."
The agency's biggest fundraiser, Inside the Bottle for Outside the Box, is held in June at Lucas Estate in Carmel. The majority of the nonprofit's $1.2 million annual budget, however, comes from a combination of state and federal Medicaid dollars that pay its staff of 52 full-time and nine part-time workers.
Still, there's never quite enough money to go around. Most of the small-group rooms in the 14,000-square-foot facility look just like they did decades ago when the building was a nursing home. Some of the same furnishings are there. A grant from the International Design Guild helped remodel three of the rooms into bright, efficient working spaces. But 16 remain to be done.
"If I could wave a magic wand, I wish all of our rooms could be redone," Hartman said.
___
Source: The Indianapolis Star, http://indy.st/1W3zKA3
___
Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com