Every young adult with I/DD deserves an opportunity to live a life filled with hopes and dreams, friendships, a sense of purpose, meaningful engagement, love, self-respect, confidence.
The Extended Family provides a community based approach to address the needs of young adults who struggle with isolation after aging out of their academic settings. Some of the issues TEF addresses include:
- What happens to individuals who are unable to participate in a traditional work environment?
- How can we create opportunities for these young adults to explore and reinforce their capabilities so they may achieve their untapped potential?
- As young adults age out of the educational system, how can we continue to develop and reinforce their social skills?
- How do we make them feel VALUED members of the community?
TEF works to create a social and entrepreneurial environment that reinforces both creative and social skills in a setting that focuses on what participants CAN do rather than on what they cannot.
Meaningful engagement
The Extended Family meaningfully engages exceptional adults who rely on qualified support by providing a sanctuary for learning skills, community integration, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging where personal interests, passions, and unrecognized intellectual abilities are revealed.
The primary goals of TEF’s Meaningful Engagement model are:
- To provide ongoing skills-based training classes for adults with I/DD, within an environment that stimulates and challenges them, and is customized to their individual abilities and needs through Adaptive Solutions.
- To nurture each participant’s ability to take on new roles, learn new skills, and contribute towards the development of new enterprises.
- To provide opportunities for peer socialization and support.
- To develop opportunities for participants to serve as program ambassadors, engaging with members of the larger community to share their skills and create positive attitudes towards people with I/DD.
Interns actively engage in ideation, decision making, and problem solving to create and develop micro-business enterprises. All interns are included in every aspect of the business. An adaptive work plan is created for each individual ensuring the full participation of everyone.
At the heart of Meaningful Engagement (ME) is an environment of inclusion, collaboration and teamwork within a no-pressure, non-hierarchical structure, resulting in a keen sense of ownership, responsibility, and pride.
And most of all, we have FUN!
Reality of Life for Adults with Developmental Disabilities
- 85% of Adults with Developmental Disabilities are Unemployed
- Even more don't have a home of their own
- Disturbing increase of isolation, psychotropic drugs, suicide, incarceration, and homelessness
- Parents are forced to quit jobs to stay home with their adult child
- Aging adults find themselves in emergency situations because parents can no longer care for them
- Every parent lies awake at night terrified about their child's future
What We Know to Be True...
...is that until every one of them has a job, a social life, and a home to call their own, they are powerless. It's unacceptable that these exceptional adults don't have the opportunity to create a life filled with purpose; a life of personal power.
The Starfish Parable is Our Guiding Belief
Strolling along the edge of the sea, a man catches sight of a young woman who appears to be engaged in a ritual dance. She stoops down, then straightens to her full height, casting her arm out in an arc.
Drawing closer, he sees the beach around her is littered with starfish, and she is throwing them one by one into the sea.
He lightly mocks her: “There are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see, for miles up the beach. What difference can saving a few of them possibly make?”
Smiling, she bends down and once more tosses a starfish out over the water, saying serenely, "It certainly makes a difference to this one."
-Anonymous
