The Red Couch Is A Year Old: The Ability Beyond Disability services manager, mover and shaker of our daughter’s residential component, invited the two moms and the residential staff to lunch to mark a year since the ladies moved into their cozy duplex/CRS (Continuous Residential Support) on August 1 in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The atmosphere and […]
DDS
Spirals Of Anxiety: 10-21-11
Halloween’s Haunt: Every year as the leaves drop and front lawns are bedecked with spider webs, dangling sheeted ghostly figures, and wondrous ghastly creatures, our daughter gets sick. By Halloween night or a few days later on her birthday, she is either on Zithromax (yes we have tried the naturopathic route) or at least Mucinex […]
DSS Messes and A Scary Future: 9-19-11
DSS: The Connecticut Department of Social Services, which handles the entitlements of Medicaid and food stamps, has decided to mess with my head in the last week or two. I can imagine how this must feel for folks who are more handicapped, cannot get to the DSS offices, or have few family members to deal […]
A Celebration For The Artists: 9-9-11
Sphere Art Program: The Ridgefield group SPHERE had their end of summer art show last night. Our daughter’s many pieces were displayed including the papier-mâché dog head. She and her apartment-mate greeted us in the Lounsbury House, the 1896 mansion on Main Street that serves as Ridgefield’s elegant community center. SPHERE board members were taking […]
The Thirty Day Meeting and Temporal Awareness: 9-7-11
Pending Good News: I received a voice mail from the Pegasus people to say that our daughter has a 95% chance of being in the Fall riding program. We will find out Thursday. At 12:30 today the Ability Beyond Disability staff and our DDS case manager meet at an ABD office to discuss the last […]
One Mother Wanted To Schmooze: 9-2-11
The Check In: Thirty minutes after I published yesterday’s post, our daughter called; “Hi.” “Hi Sweetie, how are you?” “Good.” “How was your day?” “Good.” “What did you do?” “Well…” And she went on to describe a trip to the recreation center, time on the treadmill, a visit to Puppy Love, a local pet store, […]
Expressing Sympathy And A Special Needs Match: 8-18-11
I Am Sorry For Your Loss: Those are the words our daughter wrote, unprompted, on the sympathy card she sent yesterday to her friend’s parents. I was so touched. She added one more sentence, “I miss…” and signed her name. Who taught her those words? I did, the culture did. She absorbs it all, seamlessly, […]
A Visit From DDS: 8-10-11
Yesterday’s News: Our outstanding Connecticut Department of Developmental Services case manager visited the young ladies’ apartment yesterday. She sent me an email to express how much she liked the apartment, how happy the girls seem to be and what a wonderful job Ability Beyond Disability has done in fulfilling the record keeping requirements of DDS. […]
Night Time Fears: 7-30-11
A Team of Caretakers: Ability Beyond Disability, our service provider agency, is hoping that the program developed for our daughter and her apartment mate will serve as both a template and a model program in the State. Utilizing the CRS residential category (a Connecticut Department of Developmental Services (DDS) model that translates to Continuous Residential Supports For […]
No Cable, No Move? And Mucho Dinero: 7-20-11
No Kidding: 8:33 P.M. last evening our residential coordinator emailed that installation of the cable Wi-Fi system failed yesterday due to antiquated wiring. Hey, that sounds like me, antiquated wiring and some fraying around the edges. Her staff requires Internet access immediately upon move-in and it wasn’t certain that cable rescheduling with re-wiring is possible […]
Pots, Pans and New Plans: 7-18-11
Outfitting For Adulthood: Yesterday, the sunny sleepy summer kind of day, our daughter was content to loll around the house, regrouping from a hectic first week of Ability Beyond Disability programming, two very social nights at home, and an energizing yet ultimately enervating sidewalk sales event the previous day. Unfortunately for her, Mom has a […]
Not All Links In The Chain Are The Same: 7-16-11
Incomplete Cat: Yesterday I hit a wall. Our daughter’s day, an “Individualized Day” with a coach who takes her to her volunteer job, was a bomb. First the poor lady got lost coming to the house. Not a biggie. But then the placement, The Complete Cat Clinic in Brookfield, CT, didn’t know they were coming. […]
Becoming a Client: 4-30-11
Admission Paperwork: On Friday, May 6th, our daughter becomes a client of her service agency. The other mother and I are instructed to bring psychological evaluations, documentation of all income sources such as SSI and SSA; Medicaid and social security cards; guardianship documents; recent medical exams; lists of medications and doctors information to a meeting […]
Graduation Queen: 4-25-11
Closed Stores and Opened Hearts: Our visit with our daughter was delicious. Not because we shopped until she dropped, because most of the stores at the outdoor mall she had chosen, were closed for Easter Sunday. She weathered this disappointment without a blip. In the past, this would have been a disaster. The restaurant she […]
The Alphabet Soup of Adult Special Needs: 4-14-11
Acronyms Abound: The category of housing that meets our daughter’s needs is a relatively new designation referred to as a CRS (Continuous Residential Support – different from a traditional group home/CLA “Community Living Arrangement” as CLA’s are licensed, and funding is different. The CRS “allows for more self-determination”. PRAT (Program Review….)is the body that will make the […]