Palmer Center, our longstanding and award winning home for 26 aging individuals is about to get a new lease on life! 

While we are proud of the services and supports provided by our excellent staff at Palmer, we recognized several years ago that after more than 25 years we needed to make significant improvements to the physical environment.
And so we went about  securing funds through the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities so that we can now build three state of the art homes, each of which will serve 10 persons.
Ulster Greene Arc is a creative provider committed to the people we serve, and eager to provide the best services possible.  We continue to be interested in new and innovative approaches to service delivery, and are committed to the process of building services around the needs of the people we serve.  Constructing three-ten person homes to replace a large twenty-six bed site will allow us to provide more individualized services to the people living there. These homes will be fully accessible for the people, many of whom are nonambulatory. It will create greater privacy in that each person will have a single bedroom. Such features as generous natural light, and attention to detail in lighting and other design features will contribute to a more homelike atmosphere while continuing to provide the intensive medical oversight so necessary to achieve nursing home diversion.  In addition, this construction will allow us to meet the needs of four more people.  We anticipate using one home to provide intensive services to individuals who have aging issues such as Alzheimer's disease.  We are grateful for the sensitive and professional approach taken to the project’s design by the architectural firm of Scott Dutton Associates, LLC and the engineering firm of Brinnier and Larios, P.C.

We also have the good fortune to be working with the two firms, serving as primary contractors: Kirchoff Consigli Construction Management, and Arold Construction Company.

As the pace of the project is moving quickly, we hope to achieve occupancy by early 2010!

During the week of June 22nd, Margaret Hoffmann, Community Support Services Director, Service Coordinators Nakeyia Younger and Jason Hocker, and Brian Doyle, Associate Executive Director, traveled to Baldwinsville, a small town outside of Syracuse to work with three of the person’s for whom we provide services in an extraordinary two-day experience in person-centered work: Awakening the Spirit

This immersion conference, sponsored by Onondaga Community Living, was a unique opportunity to work with and learn from Dr. Beth Mount and Executive Director of Onondaga Community Living, Pat Frantangelo, both pioneers in individualized supports.

We, along with other agencies from across the state, discussed and hammered out how to move forward with innovative and individualized services. During the conference, we worked with three individuals – Marsha Koument, Phillip Velonis, and Brenda Berryan, to look deeply into their life histories, the important relationships in their lives, their choices, preferences, dreams, goals, as well as their vulnerabilities and needs. Through these very far reaching discussions and utilizing person centered tools developed by Onondaga Community Living, we learned much more then is ordinarily discovered through the typical ISP process.

Marsha, Phillip and Brenda were refreshingly forthcoming, candid and insightful in speaking about who they really are as persons and what they really want for their lives. Perhaps most importantly we learned a great deal of the gifts they have to offer those around them.

Through a new pilot “Portal” Program introduced by OMRDD, we will now be working with Marsha, Phillip and Brenda, as well as several other people to develop highly individualized plans and supports that will help them move toward their dreams and desires in a deliberate and focused way. Once again, we look to live our Mission: To offer people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities opportunities to live and experience full lives.

Recently, OMR/DD’s Commissioner, Diana Jones Ritter announced a series of Public Forums to gather input as she and her staff develop OMRDD’s Statewide Comprehensive Plan for Services for the Period 2009 through 2013.Anumber of family members, service providers, self advocates and other stakeholders presented testimony to the Commissioner. At the June 15^th forum, conducted in Kingston, I presented the following testimony.

-Brian Doyle 

Good afternoon.  My name is Brian Doyle, Associate Executive Director for Ulster-Greene ARC.  First, I want to thank Commissioner Jones Ritter for conducting this series of forums and in particular for posing the questions posted in the forum announcement.  Those questions are certainly pertinent to the many challenges and opportunities we face today.  I wish to address my remarks to the question of what steps need to be taken to make the developmental disabilities system more person centered and individualized.

Ulster-Greene ARC provides services and supports to nearly 1,200 individuals within Ulster and Greene Counties. Our 50 year old agency, a chapter of NYSARC, is a provider of a wide range of traditional program models.  Through various evolutions of thought and discussion with various stakeholders, we have recently adopted our new Mission Statement, “To offer people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities opportunities to lead and experience full lives”.  We have embarked, over the past year, on a vigorous effort to direct our energy toward a more person centered approach with self directed services as a centerpiece.  We are aggressively pursuing Consolidated Support Services/Self Determination and engaging in OMRDD’s Portal Pilot, as well as surveying other provider agencies for related best practices throughout the state.  While we will continue to pursue person centeredness through these unique opportunities, we are also committed to challenging ourselves in our more traditional programs so that even in those program models, the dreams and desires of the individuals we serve are at the forefront.

We applaud and are grateful for your commitment toward this more individualized approach, but we must ask for a greater level of consistency in the messages sent to us by OMRDD. 

The Division of Quality Management (DQM) is spearheading the use of National Core Indicators (NCI) as a true measure of quality.  The NCI certainly does speak to all of the meaningful elements of OMRDD’s mission; however, we and other providers, on a daily basis, experience DQM program surveys that speak far more to the minutia of regulatory compliance than to the profound meaning and purpose of our supports and services as they impact people’s lives. 

We certainly recognize the need to satisfy federal regulations and preserve the safety and wellbeing of the individuals for whom we care. However, there is no doubt that the increasingly onerous approach taken in the DQM surveys of certified programs at best distracts our staff from the mission that we and OMRDD share. At worst they run counter to our desire for our staff and programs to take risks as they center their attention on enriching the lives of the people we serve.   

Some examples:  

The ever expanding array of “safeguards” that proliferate in Individual Service Plans create a risk averse climate where individuals and staff are intimidated away from focusing on what the person truly wants for themselves.  

Because survey citations result in plans of corrective action which, virtually every time, we are told, must address “systemic changes”, we put in place a tangle of “to do”, “must do” and “can’t do” lists and checklists, all of which create a labyrinth of belts and suspenders intended to make for some unattainable 100% fail-safe world.  

When we insist that a Residential Manager concentrates on keeping a case of canned goods off the floor of the food pantry we are keeping her from the vital work of supporting people meaningfully in their home, relationships, and their work.

We are therefore asking that OMRDD closely examine the survey process both in tone and substance and seek to re-tool it towards a greater emphasis in those quality indicators reflected in the National Core Indicators.  

Again, I thank you for this opportunity to speak and thank you for the leadership you, and your executive and DDSO staff are providing in these difficult times.

 Respectfully submitted, 

Brian Doyle
Associate Executive Director
Ulster-Greene ARC
471 Albany Avenue
Kingston, NY  12401
(845)331-4300 x218
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