By Mary Beth DeCecco
Walking through the corridors of New Visions is like walking through a school. There is a cafeteria and a gymnasium, as well as classrooms and lockers. But this isn’t a school. New Visions is a place where adults with disabilities learn to embrace their possibilities. It’s a day treatment facility serving over 600 disabled adults who come to foster relationships with adults who teach, care and mentor them. Many program participants are even placed in living facilities in and around the region and work in various jobs.
“We operate much like a school,” said Margie Sheehan, director of communications, public relations and development. “When our program participants come to us, they are assessed to find out what level they are at.”
Upon determination of their assessment, they are given options for various services and support in order to help them become “as independent and community integrated as they can.” These services include:Residential, which provides over 50 community-based living facilities in Albany County for individuals, both in home and apartment dwellings. Some require daily supervision, while others do not.
• Vocational services, in the form of everything to pre-vocational training to actual vocational training. “We place program participants in competitive job opportunities in the community,” said Andrew McKenzie, executive director of New Visions. They are trained in janitorial, food service, light manufacturing and the mailing business. “There isn’t any job that we won’t take a look at and decide if we can do. The employers understand the nature of needs involved and knows that they will get a good worker,” he said. Some of their accounts include: the Federal Courthouse, Averill Harriman State Office Campus, the O’Brien Building, British-American Corporation, the Capital Care Physicians building, the Division of Military and Naval Affairs, the NYS Tax & Finance building, Irving Tissue and Owens Corning.
• Day treatment program for participants not ready for vocational or pre-vocational training. This program helps people with activities related to daily living and self care and clinical services, such as speech and occupational therapy. “Many of these people are involved in volunteering,” said McKenzie, which, in turn, helps them become more independent. They work in 70 local businesses such as the North East Regional Food Bank, churches, schools, the NYS Museum and events such as Alive at Five. “We provide meaningful activities to help people achieve a sense of productivity.”
• Day habilitation program, for participants more interested and more capable of ongoing community experience. These people are less dependent on clinical supports and are more interested in getting fully community integrated. “The community is their classroom,” said McKenzie, explaining that they learn to use community resources such as the library and restaurants. They also volunteer.
“There isn’t anywhere where there isn’t some kind of component of volunteers.”
New Visions also offers Medicaid service coordinators, family support coordinators who will go into a home and give parents a night off when needed and a drop-in center for parents still at work. Dances and membership meetings are also offered.
Although most participants at New Visions are in their late 30s or early 40s, many have never experienced life outside their home or have been apart from their parents.
“Sometimes it’s a difficult thing to let the world have them,” said Sheehan, emphathetic to the parents’ difficulty in letting go. But within a few years of arriving at New Visions, the participants seem to thrive. “They’re out there living and volunteering and leading much richer lives,” she said.
When she needs a break in her day, Sheehan often visits the cafeteria and classrooms to talk to the program participants. “It’s almost impossible to work here and not get involved.” She also teaches yoga on site once a week, calling it “very refreshing.” “You remember what your work here is all about.”
Located on Krumkill Road in Slingerlands, New Visions has been in existence for 55 years. With a staff of 530 and a square footage of 78,000, it is the largest employer in the Town of Bethlehem.
Organizationally, New Visions is a chapter of NYSARC, Inc., a voluntary organization of 57 chapters throughout the northeast consisting of parents, friends and volunteers serving thousands of New York residents with developmental disabilities. Formerly known as the Albany County Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC), the name was abandoned a couple of years ago as part of a national effort to demystify the nature of mental disabilities.
One of the earlier chapters was established in 1951 (it was a tri-county chapter consisting of Albany, Rensselaer and Schenectady) by a group of parents in Albany who banded together to lobby the Legislature for services for families living with disabled children.
Their efforts were a concerted response to the shortcomings of services available in earlier decades, when disabled children frequently were consigned to institutions.
This proved to be a tragic solution, as exposed in the 1970s by an intrepid young reporter who slipped into the Willowbrook institution on Staten Island and documented the horrors of institution life. That reporter’s name was Geraldo Rivera. The end result was a landmark resolution—the Willowbrook Consent Decree—by which New York State voluntarily agreed to begin the process of de-institutionalization.
From that group of caring, determined parents back in 1951, NYSARC has expanded its presence to every county in the state. The good news doesn’t end there: with technology and early diagnosis, there are many options for disabled children today.
“The world is a more accessible and accommodating place,” said McKenzie.
With so many services offered and program participants coming as far away as California for the chance to lead a fulfilling life, it’s no wonder that the residential program has tripled in size in the past three-and-a-half years.
“We’re busting at the seams,” said McKenzie.
And fortunately for New Visions and its participants, there is no end in sight.