Our Vision

“To create an inclusive culture where everyone, everyone is held in the highest respect, feels safe, is valued and as a result affirms others and works collaboratively toward personal goals and achieving our mission.”

Our Mission

It was Mother Teresa who said, "I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can only love one person at at time. I can only feed one person at a time. Just one, one, one." In that same vein we derive our slogan "We See the Individual in Everyone," and carry out our simple mission statement below:

Our mission is to create opportunities for independence and acceptance in our communities by supporting people in:

  • Making Choices - Everyday choices you and I take for granted.
  • Building Relationships - With other people other than those paid to be in their lives.
  • Sharing Places - Places in the community you and I go everyday.
  • Developing Skills - Functional skills needed to live successfully in our communities.
  • Enhancing Reputations - Gaining social not just physical acceptance from other members of the community.
  • Contributing Back - Giving something back to the community by working, volunteering, or helping others.

Simplicity

This simple mission was adopted from the "Framework for Accomplishment" developed by John O’Brien. This simple structure provides guidance for staff and simple measures of our success. It's easy to see jobs achieved, relationships built, skills developed. Achieving these goals is more complicated, but our mission remains very simple and straightforward.

Gentle Culture

More recently we have adopted the philosophy and approach of Gentle Teaching created by Dr. John McGee. What started as a technique for working with children with autism has blossomed into a full philosophy to support persons with all types of disabilities to feel safe and affirmed, so that they can affirm others in return and develop and maintain meaningful relationships. This decision, more than any other in our recent history has affected not only our treatment approach, but our entire organizational culture including all the relationships we have with each other internally and with parents, guardians and representatives of our funding agencies.