Impact
Annual Physicals
A unique aspect is our health care programming. Persons with severe intellectual disabilities are susceptible to inconsistent or poor healthcare because they cannot effectively communicate their needs and often exhibit social behaviors that challenge the identification and completion of treatment. Our health program establishes a recommended healthcare delivery model to eliminate or reduce the barriers that individuals with developmental disabilities and their caregivers experience in obtaining healthcare.
-Current residents receive their annual physical, labs, and completed dental exam within 45 days of annual due date
-Newly admitted residents receive exams within 45 days of admission
-Covid-19 protocols for residents and staff have been in place since March 2020
Family Participation
to come
IEP Goals
to come
Targeted Behaviors
to come
Life Skills
Therapeutic Services
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Community Participation
to come
Therapeutic services include Occupational, Physical, Developmental and Speech and Language therapy, Mental Health Counseling, Medical Specialties, Dietary Management, and Positive Behavior Support.
Hope House specializes in residential programs for vulnerable individuals with developmental disabilities who exhibit severe behavior challenges. All have failed or been rejected by other programs because of the degree of their inappropriate social behavior. Problem behaviors occur when an individual has limited abilities to regulate their emotions in response to internal thoughts or external circumstances. Children and adults with cognitive learning disabilities, psychiatric disorders, and autism frequently act on behavioral responses that can be harmful to self and others. The addition of the corona virus crisis has only magnified the residents’ emotional responses and placing a strain on everyone’s mental health.
The pandemic has demonstrated the imperative need for a mental health program that is accessible to the learning demands of children and adults with cognitive challenges. The traditional mental health approach is to provide talk therapy and psychoeducation. Unfortunately, this approach is often difficult for individuals with cognitive, memory and communication Impairments to understand. It has shown very limited efficacy in helping persons to regulate their emotions when upset and learn to take positive actions to get their needs met. In response, Hope House would like to retool and add a mental health treatment model designed specifically for persons with cognitive disabilities to its therapeutic services. This would address the health and safety needs of our residents and staff as well.
The agency uses The Emotional Regulation Skills System for Cognitively Challenged Clients developed and researched by Julie Brown, PhD., LCSW.
Our goal is to increase participation for our residents in their community to a degree never actualized before by these individuals. We provide the opportunity for our individuals to make social connections and friends with persons in the community, the gift of knowing and being known to someone who is not paid to work with them.
The program aims to change community member’s beliefs through frequent contact with people with intellectual disabilities. Community outreach promotes experiences for community members to know a person with intellectual disabilities as an individual.
The program emphasizes twice weekly educational trips into the community.
We deepen each person’s social world, encouraging contributing citizenry, and expands
the communities knowledge of persons with intellectual disabilities.