A major housing provider will be discontinuing their services with Supports for Community Living on April 9, which SCL representatives said will displace 60 of their clients in Daviess County. SCL provides assistance to individuals with an intellectual or developmental disability to help them live in the community as independently as possible.
Services include employment assistance, social skill building, budgeting, how to cook and more.
SCL Coordinator Jill Thompson said the organization is seeking help from community members looking to house one to three clients and provide care for them as a housing provider would.
Thompson said that clients would still be able to receive services from SCL, however people who sign up as Family Home Providers (FHP) essentially welcome the client in as a part of the family.
“FHPs would get paid, you would get stipends and different things, but you are their caregiver,” Thompson said.
Amber Payne, Owner of AP Case Management, said that the displacement — should they not get enough people to sign up — will have a negative domino effect on the city. Currently they have one client who is already set to leave the city.
“Case managers lose their clients; day training will lose their clients; behavior specialists lose them; so one client can affect anywhere from one to six services,” Payne said.
Both Payne and Thompson compared the FHP program to adult foster care.
Community members who open their home can receive up to three clients. While this program has been long-standing with other FHPs throughout the community, at this moment both Payne and Thompson believe that this could be a great fit for a lot of people within the city.
“We just feel like there’s a lot of natural caregivers out there that would love to have this as a career, and that just they have no idea that it’s an option,” Payne said.
They said some FHP families treat the work that they do as a career.
There is a training program that Payne and Thompson coordinate to help adjust new FHPs into the lifestyle and to help teach people how to care for their new family members. And much like their life now, the clients continue to have a case manager and services from SCL.
If there are still people that haven’t been placed in a FHP, then they will likely have to relocate out of town. Thompson said that other residential living facilities in town are pretty full.
To sign up and learn more about becoming a FHP, contact Thompson at 270-485-9519.
