AMIB Bi-Annual Newsletters

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Spring 2005

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Long-Term Care Community Residence

AMIB has learned valuable lessons caring for persons with multiple disabilities and with this education we embark on a new venture…  AMIB has learned valuable lessons caring for person with multiple disabilities.  The first is that people can care for themselves and make important choices in living.  The second is that people can work and, with help, find useful employment. The third is that people can share their talents and interests: going shopping, attending worship services and enjoying entertaining activites.

Now AMIB has embarked on a new venture: Assuring that the individuals we serve live out their lives at an AMIB home. AMIB has constructed a fully accessible long term care group home.  To our knowledge, this is the first community home for the aging multiple-disabled.  We believe that our lessons can be shared with hundreds of others who want to find ways to provide home and community-based care as an alternative to nursing homes or institutions.

When multiple-handicapped people lived in institutions with few goals in their lives, their options were limited. Now those who live in an AMIB community residence excercise daily, work at an occupation, enjoy good nutrition and learn skills of daily living the larger population takes for granted.

As our group home individuals age, AMIB faces an important challenge — providing them with barrier-free settings they need as they become senior citizens and require greater care.

As AMIB's board members considered the consequences of this change and questioned similar nonprofit organizations about their plans to care for aged residents, they learned that there were no plans.  Without a plan, the board knew that many AMIB residents would eventually have to be transferred to nursing homes not suited to care for blind and mentally handicapped people.

And so they commissioned a study to research options and make recommendations.  As a result of that study, board members decided to become pioneers and planned to build New Jersey's first long-term community residence — a home that can be adapted to provide the kind of concentrated care that our residents require as they grow older.  AMIB hopes this will also be a model for simialr agencies looking for ways to provide elderly with the care they need.

The new house is in Lacey Township, Ocean County, and is an attractive addition to a lovely neighborhood on a cul-de-sac in a wooded area.  It is home to eight individuals who are able to enjoy the combination of supervision and independence that AMIB provides in a barrier free environment.