I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. It is both a happy and sad time for many of our students and residents. Those who have involved families appreciate the time with their family. Unfortunately, many of our students on the campus are unable to spend the holidays with their parents or siblings – typically due to a court order. Aware of that, we appreciate the donations many of you give to us during the holidays. Our staff try to make sure that every child on the campus has at least one or more gifts so that they too can enjoy some of the holidays. Thank you for making that possible.

As we begin a new year, we continue to expand our network of services to both serve others who could benefit from our services, and to broaden our network with more options for those we are already serving.

• In the fall we successfully opened our tenth IRA in Saugerties for five adults. This allowed us to bring back the last adult who was still receiving services from Devereux in another state.
• We converted a two bedroom supported apartment in Rhinebeck to two individual apartments, allowing us to serve a male and female at that site, and providing each with their private space.
• We have decided not to proceed with the HUD financed house that was going to be located at the base of our campus. Although granted the funds, once we got into the details we realized that the cost to comply with all of the applicable HUD requirements would far exceed the grant award, and was so high that we questioned the appropriateness of proceeding. By the time we met all of the requirements, the cost of the house was exceeding $1.3 Million! This was more than twice that for any of our community houses.
• We have received the verbal approval to proceed with developing another IRA for individuals aging out in our OMRDD district. This will include students from our campus school, as well as those who are becoming 21 in other schools from our district. This follows a new process that OMRDD is utilizing to assure better planning for anyone aging out in the district. It was a competitive process, and we are extremely proud that we were selected. We will now work with the parents of those students to create the right home for their son or daughter. We are hoping for the development of this IRA in late Spring/early Summer, and it essentially replaces the planned HUD financed house.
• We have just submitted a proposal to develop a separate program for twenty autistic children who would otherwise be sent to programs in other states. If granted, this will be the first expansion of our campus program since its opening fifteen years ago. It also will provide us the ability to specifically provide residential services for autistic children who are unable to be served by day services alone. Like our Millwood Program, we will utilize the principles of Applied Behavioral Analysis.

All of these developments and services continue to need your support and assistance. I appreciate and thank you for the support you already provide, and hope you will continue to support our efforts – and to provide feedback on how we can better meet your son or daughter.

Sincerely,

John O'Keefe
Executive Director