GCS Newsletter THE LEAFLET JAN/FEB 2023

Garden Center Services

The View From My Chair

DIRECTOR

spoken to, and are supported in community settings.

Shari & Gerry

If you count the two years

I spent volunteering at the Special Religious Education Program at Blessed Sacrament parish in Springfield, I have been working with and advocating for adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities for over 50 years. It has been an incredible journey and it’s been heartening to experience the positive changes in how individuals with special needs are talked about, are

Acceptance is created from an empowered movement that educates others to embrace diversity and love life by seeing beyond abilities.

-Annie Hopkins

I started my paid employment in the field as a direct support staff at a state operated developmental center in Champaign, IL. Though a number of my fellow coworkers truly cared about the individuals we served, it was still very difficult to provide the individuals with the quality of life they deserved in such an isolated and restrictive environment. I painfully remember a

number of episodes where I had to sit with individuals as they calmed themselves after being alarmingly distraught because they weren’t allowed to take part in normal activities in the community.

Over time, certain high profile cases and the civil rights movement led to new laws and Acts. In early 1972, Geraldo Rivera, an investigative reporter for WABC-TV in New York, was called by an activist physician recently fired for speaking out about the abysmal conditions at Willowbrook. Rivera’s exposé, Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace, garnered national attention, and was an indictment of institutionalization and treatment of persons with developmental disabilities. The establishment of

A MESSAGE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE

GARDEN CENTER’S FIRST SEED GRADUATE CELEBRATION

In our last newsletter, we told you about the first graduates of Garden Center’s SEED (Skill Enhancement and Employee Development) Program. Participants complete ten online classes, prepare and deliver a training for their work group, and plan and take someone (or multiple people) they serve to do an activity they have never done before.

In the last two months, four additional Direct Support staff have completed the SEED program and 27 more are working toward completion now. On January 24th, Garden Center will hold our first SEED graduation dinner, where program graduates and their guests will celebrate this amazing accomplishment together.

In addition to an hourly raise, in the year to come, these new graduates will create an advisory council that will help guide decision making at the agency.

We are so proud of these staff and look forward adding even more SEED graduates to their ranks in the future.

YOU FOR THE HOLIDAY CHEER

A big thank you to the MANY families and friends who helped make the holidays extra special at Garden Center this year. So many of you sent in treats, cards, whole meals, and gifts that made the season brighter for those we serve and our staff. THANK YOU!

We are especially grateful to the Knights of Columbus #14553 and Honeywell UOP who gave gifts to folks at several homes this year.

We would also like to send a special Shout Out to the Kunkes Family who again served a delicious Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinner for everyone who stayed at Garden Center over the holidays.

They also bought each person a personalized gift AND bought much needed gifts for all the homesincluding bedding, towels, pots & pans.

THANK YOU!

TENDING OUR GARDEN

Your advocacy made a difference! THANK YOU!

Recently, we forwarded you some emails from our funding advocacy group, the They Deserve More coalition. These emails requested your assistance in contacting your legislators to support an amendment that would appropriate additional funding for programs like ours. With your help, we sent more than 74,000 emails to legislators, and your actions inspired 34 Senate and House members to sign a peer letter of support for the amendment. As a result, Senate amendment #5 appropriated $12.5 million dollars for the community system that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Although this amount will not fully meet the need, it is a welcome help to support the committed, but underpaid, direct support staff in this essential field.

THANK

We are so grateful to all of you who helped Garden Center fulfill the Giving Tuesday threshold match from The Coleman Foundation. Because of you, Garden Center exceeded the required number of donors at $125 or more and received the full $12,500 matching grant from the Foundation.

Garden Center would also like to thank Chuck’s Southern Comforts Cafe’ Burbank, Durbin’s Burbank, Pop’s Italian Beef on Kedzie, Insperity, Pete’s Service Center, and The Liquor House for partnering with us as Business Collaborators for the Giving Tuesday effort.

As a result of your donations, the Coleman Foundation grant, and the support of our Business Collaborators, Garden Center raised over $55,000 for services for adults with intellectual disabilities at Garden Center Services and we couldn’t be more thrilled and grateful.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ONGOING SUPPORT OF GARDEN CENTER!

OUR 2022 GIVING TUESDAY BUSINESS COLLABORATORS

Garden Center’s Giving Tuesday Businesses Collaborators support GCS by sharing support on their signage, through social media, and making an individual donations or donating a percentage of their Giving Tuesday sales to Garden Center to help us maximize our funding match.

We would like to offer a special Thank You to these businesses who helped GCS reach our Giving Tuesday goal.

Growing dignity and independence

SECOND CHANCE THRIFT NEWS

After an amazing holiday season, we are now getting ready for SUPER SALES! On the last Saturday of every month, we will have everything in store at 50% off!

In the first 6 months we were open the thrift store generated over $50,000 in sales! This is incredible, especially when it was accomplished by two paid staff members and a very small, but mighty volunteer group. If we want to continue the success of the thrift shop then we must have more help, especially from the families of the individuals we serve.

OUR MISSION

Advancing lives of connection, contribution, and meaning for persons with developmental disabilities and the individuals that support them.

Second Chance Thrift Shoppe

Volunteer Appreciation Holiday Party

We need you! Any time you can help is appreciated. If you can sign up for one four-hour shift a week, that would be terrific! Visit our website and follow the THRIFT link for more information OR reach out to Gerry directly at 708-560-4400.

the Protection and Advocacy (P&A) title in the 1975 amendments to the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (DD Act) was a civil rights achievement of several leaders including the late Elizabeth Boggs, Ph.D.

David Ferleger, a long-standing champion of the rights of people with developmental disabilities, filed the landmark Halderman v. Pennhurst State School and Hospital case in 1974. The Pennhurst decision was the first federal court decision to hold that there is a right to community services for people with disabilities.

Litigation in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s questioned both the purpose of institutions and the confinement of people in institutions, and progressively led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) language that the United States Supreme Court was later to use in the Olmstead decision – declaring that to needlessly confine a person in an institution is segregation, that segregation is discrimination, and the ADA forbids such discrimination.

It’s incredible to see how our own agency has changed since its’ beginnings in 1956. Our spirited individuals are living and working in their communities and in many ways adding to the social fabric of their neighborhoods! We have persons with paid jobs; individuals are volunteering at a number of community sites including our own Second Chance Thrift Shop; when persons aren’t participating in a well rounded curriculum at our day program, they are constantly going out and about enjoying all that our wonderful communities offer.

And I am very excited to see how the next chapter unfolds! People will often ask me if I’m thinking about retiring and my response is, “Are you nuts? I’ve got the best job in the world!” Peace,

BOARD