Home to Stay is very excited to add our new DDD service, supporting adults living with developmental disabilities. When I was a student at Rutgers, I started working part time as a Direct Support Professional (DSP) at a residential facility for adults living with various types of developmental disabilities. I grew a lot as a person working with these individuals and really came to see them as fellow human beings doing the best they can in life, just like I was. I no longer saw the disability in them; I saw their humanity, and this was transformational.
Educating our DSPs, the individuals with disabilities that we support, their families, and the community in general to focus on the things we have in common and our shared humanity is a large part of Home to Stay’s DDD program. The relationship that Home to Stay fosters and nurtures with our DDD clients and their families is rooted in this idea of seeing the individual not the disability. Just as it was transformational for myself over 30 years ago, it can be just as life changing for the individuals we serve and their families to see it through this lens.
A substantial part of Home to Stay’s DDD program is building as much independence as possible, which entails career planning, job development, and on-site job coaching. To a degree, we identify with our jobs, and the intrinsic value our contributions make to the world are important to us. The same is true for individuals living with disabilities. Making sure they have a career that aligns with their strengths, is meaningful to them and puts them on a clear path to independence/partial independence is one of the tenants of Home to Stay’s DDD Career program.
Home to Stay is able to support individuals living with disabilities and their families by providing life skills training (household skills, handling money, using public transportation, etc.), recreation opportunities (concerts, museums, playing sports/games, shopping), career planning, and job coaching services. All of these supports work in unison to help increase individual independence as much as possible and, at the end of the day, isn’t that what everybody wants? I think so!
– Andrew Dubler, Co-owner of Home to Stay
