Featuring Panelists: Jill Escher, Susan LeRitz, and Tina Underwood

Table of Contents

1. What types of housing are out there for individuals with IDD?
2. How to navigate the Regional Center?
3. What were the beginning steps of finding a home for your loved one? How did you know you were ready?
4. When a family buys a home for their special needs loved one and they live in it with 24/7 support, which of the housing categories would this belong to? Can the client/child pay rent?
5. Is LSA the same type of organization as Housing choices or something different? Or do you work in coordination with each other?
6. What about the limited conservatorship? Does that stay in effect with the parent?
7. Is there a link for how to start a Privately Owned Family-formed LLCs? Me and another two parents have wanted to do something like this.
8. How does the Bay Area Housing Corporation (BAHC) Legacy program work? Do they provide support as well as manage the home?
9. Once a family feels their child is ready, how long is the waiting list (generally speaking)?
10. What are the costs to come into an LSA home?
11. How does housing choice affect SSI? For example, if the parent provides housing does the SSI amount decrease? What if the parent pays any amount of rent or something like that?
12. When’s the next Autism Conference coming up?
13. I read VERY often about the abuses going on in special needs homes (financial, physical and sexual). What kind of preventative measures are in place, if any, at the various types of homes?
14. Are there any available IDD housing to undocumented families as far as you know?
15. I heard group homes may go away because it’s too hard to find special needs residents with the same level. Is it true?
16. Do you see care staff change often over the last 7 years? Like 50% or more turnover rate or the staff that you saw 7 years ago are now gone and there’s a new crop of them that have turned over.
17. Are there all female group homes?
18. Finding a Forever Home Video

What types of housing are out there for individuals with IDD?

Jill: So I’m going to go over 10 types of housing for adults with autism and intellectual disabilities. People who are parents dealing with adults with IDD, are often very mystified about what are even the options out there. Nothing I say here is going to be prescriptive and I have no personal advice for anyone but these are just 10 things that you should have in mind, as you move forward. 

The 1st one, State Operated Developmental Centers, something it’s not very realistic, but this was the classical paradigm for housing people with developmental disabilities. Those, as you probably know, have been shutting down around the state over the past decades. Here in Silicon Valley, Agnews Developmental Center, for example, shut down and all of the residents were moved into community placements, places like LSA licensed homes. There are still 2 developmental centers that are run by the state and also some crisis homes. 

ICFs can be privately run or publicly run their intermediate care facilities, somewhere between hospitalization and a home setting. Those are somewhat larger licensed facilities that feature a comprehensive model of care. MEDICAL, which is our state’s version of the Medicaid program, pays for those. Some people ask me ‘Where are all the ICF’s?’ and I’m like ‘I don’t know’. I haven’t seen a list of them in California. I know that they are disfavored among activists and disfavored among regional centers but nevertheless they remain a very important alternative. Under federal law, you have an entitlement to place your adult with a developmental disability in an ICF. The problem is you have no say where that ICF might be so sometimes we see people going to ICF two states away.

Third is Community Care Facilities, this is basically where LSA comes in. These are licensed residential homes, a very common form of housing for adults. They come in with different service levels, 2 being the lowest in our particular system 4I being the highest, that means that they’re dealing with more complex behavioral challenges and usually higher staffing ratios as a consequence. There are also enhanced behavior support homes which have been around now for several years. They came about as a consequence of the autism explosion and the need for homes that addressed the complex behavior and challenges of people who are more profoundly affected. With these, regional centers pay. As I always tell people, if you get a good placement in one of these, it is like winning the lottery. These placements can be very hard to come by because the demand far outstrips supply.

The Family Home Agencies are a lot like a community care facility. It’s adult foster care, but if you go to these places it looks very much like a group home. It runs a little bit differently. There’s a family teaching model here in Silicon Valley run by CCO (California Community Opportunities). There are agencies that will actually find a family, train a family, and a person will move in with that family just like adult foster care. So they’re different varieties under this umbrella. A very cool fact is that staff do not pay income taxes when they are in this particular model. That’s because of a particular federal law and that is a really cool thing that I wish applied across the board. Again, Regional Centers pay for this model. 

Fifth, a community home or apartment with regional center funded supports. These usually come in two variants, maybe three. Supported living services are usually wrap-around services where the staff sleeps in the home and serves the individual. Independent living services usually the staff doesn’t sleep in the home, they come in more intermittently and support them with skill building, bill paying, cleaning, and those kinds of things. You can also have a mix of regional center funded staff, IHSS, which is not regional center funding, self determination dollars, and private pay, any mixture of those. This is what I do for my 25 year old son. I have this weird eclectic mix. He lives basically in his own home with 24/ 7 staff. But we don’t have supported living and we don’t have a comprehensive care system, it’s just sort of cobbled together. In this variant regional centers pay for some of the services. Housing itself is private pay or you get a subsidy through Section 8 or what is called a set aside in a new development. Sometimes you’ll see an announcement, ‘New low income housing for adults with IDD’, that’s called a set aside in a new development. 

There are Non-Profit Owned Communities where there are clusters of apartments or clusters of homes featuring very various amenities where these people might live. There might be 6 to 24 of them on a particular site, could be even more. Sweetwater Spectrum, Sunflower Hill, Camphill Communities, these are just some examples. Services usually come from regional center funding or self determination, but living in the home itself might be through a voucher, private pay, etc 

Privately Owned Family LLC’s are a strongly emergent form of housing. Where families get together and say, ‘hey, let’s buy an apartment complex or let’s build something for our kids’. It might be 4 families or it might be 20 families. Some examples of this are the Peralta Apartments in Fremont, which was created by friends of children with special needs, Coastal Families in Santa Cruz, Mustang Court Commons in Petaluma. All the services come from some mixture, regional center funding, private funding, IHSS, etc. 

The most common variant is in your own Home, this is what happens by default, right? Often the regional centers or other providers can provide some support, for example, Independent Living Services (ILS), behavioral respite, a personal aid, IHSS, and coordinated family supports, which is a new Regional Center program. 

A variant of that is having an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) on your property. If you build something in your yard or convert your garage into a dwelling unit, then your child might be awarded supported living, which is the 24/7 care. 

Finally, the 10th variant after you’re gone is the Legacy Home Program. I’m sitting here in my own house, I die and I donate my home to Bay Area Housing Corporation, which is a disability housing provider. They’re based in Los Gatos, they own dozens of homes. I donate my home and, in return, they operate the home for my daughter and other people with IDD who might live with her.

Hadiyah: That was like a marathon run. I do have a quick follow up just to that last question. Thank you so much Jill for just endeavoring to go through that entire list. Also we’ve given her a microcosm of time. There will be another webinar that just talks about the types of housing later on this week. Jill, you talked a lot about the regional center and the part it plays in finding this forever home and the types of housing. I’d love to hear from you, Susan…

How to navigate the regional center?

Susan: Don’t wait until you’re 80 years old to decide that you need to find a place for your 60 year old daughter to live. Start early, recognize that they deserve to have a life different from perhaps what they’re living now. Start that process early because it could take a long time. Start having discussions with your San Andreas service coordinator and establish an IPP goal to explore housing options. Once it’s in that IPP document, that’s a legal document and it won’t get dropped off. They’ll have to talk about it at least annually, if they live at home. Find out if any of the housing models that Jill talked about were appealing. Ask more questions from them about it.

If you think residential care is something that’s appealing for you and the person you’re looking for housing for, there’s a document called the Client Development Evaluation Report (CDER). It’s a document you should get once a year. It’s all a mystery what it really says because it’s coded but they don’t give you a key code, so you don’t really know what it means. But it’s important that you’re a participant in completing that CDER, otherwise, the person that’s filling that out is your San Andreas service coordinator who in most cases doesn’t know your son or daughter very well. The CDER is what determines the level of support your loved one needs. Granted, there’s a lot of service coordinators that don’t really stick to it but it’s important to be a part of the process anyway. Tell the service coordinator that you’d like to be a part of filling out the document, so that you know the document is accurate. Establishing a level of home that could best support your son or daughter is important.

Like Jill had mentioned earlier, the levels are 2, 3, and 4A to 4I. The higher up that alphabet, the more intense the support is for someone to be successful. For example, we have 4C homes and 4F homes. The Individuals that live in 4C homes are very independent. Many of them have jobs, they’re scheduling their own transportation, and a couple of them even drive. They’re very independent and really just rely on staff for reminders to get things done. In our 4 F homes, it’s very different. They require much more support, mostly in the form of communication. There are some behavioral challenges, we call them easily redirectable. Maybe a lot of soft care support is needed or maybe not. Dana and I always call it the 4F blur because we have people in those homes that are helping with their laundry and their meal preparations and some that are relying on staff for most of that. Even though we do encourage everybody to participate at some level, even if it’s just carrying their laundry basket to the laundry room.

If you’d like to see a difference between a level 4C and 4F, I’d be happy to give you a tour. We have a couple homes where the people who live in those homes really like it when they get visitors. They like to show off their house and their room. It could give you an idea of the type of individuals that live in a 4C home or 4F home. Then you could go to your service coordinator and tell them that you saw a 4C home and you could see your loved one living there. So I’d be happy to give you a tour or share what I know offline to help guide you on what level your loved one may be.

Hadiyah: One of the reasons why we’ve endeavored to do this webinar is because we’re having these kinds of conversations all the time here at LSA with various parents. But what we were finding is that it’s very hard to find very pointed, like a library of discussions that are organized and the questions that you want answered around the clock. If you’re interested, we already have a few different blogs that we’ve written on levels, the levels of homes on our website.

Hadiyah: Susan’s already brought this up, but we want to hear from you. We’d love to give you a tour. We’d love to answer and chat with you after this is over and and and have conversations about your loved one as Tina is always reminding me of you know one person who has a loved one with IDD you know one person who has a loved one with IDD. You do not all know all people. Thank you so much, Susan, for just kind of giving us these high level view of the homes. I wanna hear now from you, Tina, and your experience, having a loved one in the home.

What were the beginning steps of finding a home for your loved one? How did you know you were ready?

Tina: I want to reiterate what Susan said about doing your homework long before you need it. It’s important that you educate yourself and know all the options. We started looking before Kevin was 22. We started educating ourselves once he finished high school and was in a post-secondary program. Parents really were your best resource for me. Their parents have all the good advice. I would chat with parents I knew or met through school programs. I would ask them ‘who’s your neurologist?’, ‘who’s your ophthalmologist?’ and then when we started thinking about housing, I asked them about   that. My husband and I didn’t want to be in our 80s and not be able to care for our child, our adult son who had never lived anywhere else. We wanted him to have his own place and do the transition while he’s young and while we’re in good health. We wanted to move him when it’s a good time for everyone, as opposed to trying to do it in an emergency situation. Also, he’s 30 years younger than us so the things that he wants to do aren’t necessarily the things that my husband and I want to do. It was important to us that he has his own different life. 

So we started conversations with him before we were ready to look for places. We’d talk about having his own apartment, having his own room, or what kind of roommates do you think you would have. He would say ‘Cinderella’ or ‘Barbie’ or something like that but the idea was to just get the conversation started. 

Since parents were our best resources we sort of met together, a group of us, again, before I was really ready. We started researching and finding different places over months. We would, as a group, go visit places, whether it was Camphill in Aptos or Sweetwater Spectrum in Sonoma. Then we would chat about what we saw and what we’re familiar with. 

Kevin turned 22 and was able at that point to transition to another place. We visited Cypress, which was about the open that year, and we were actually offered a place for Kevin. However, we had only been considering placements for three months and I ultimately wasn’t ready. My husband and I certainly talked about how Kevin could have probably done it but since we hadn’t been seriously considering it for that long, I didn’t think I could do it, so we said no. We decided at that point we would spend the next however many years getting Kevin ready. We contacted the regional center and asked for independent living skills training. It’s important that your child is a client of the regional center because they do most of the paying, whether it’s supported living or in business care homes. So the ability path has people that would come into our home an hour a week and work with Kevin on doing his laundry, learning how to make a peanut butter sandwich, etc. We did that for three years to get him ready. Then we were offered a spot at Cypress again and I jumped at the chance. 

We all have to come around to the place where we understand that someone else can take good care of our adult child. A lot of people think that no one can take as good a care of my child as I can, and that may be exactly true. But there are people, staff and organizations that can take really good care of our child. That was a big step for us, realizing that some things are better in the new location. 

We had it in our IPP that our end goal was for Kevin to live separately from us. So once we were offered a place at Cypress, we contacted our person at the San Andreas Regional Center (SARC) and told them that we were interested and they sent the packet over to Life Services Alternatives (LSA). The way it works for residential care homes is the homes have no say in whose packets they receive, the regional center sends it. But the residential care homes say who would be a good match for their program or their home and then they review those. So I asked the regional center to please send Kevin’s packet because I think he’s a good fit. Then LSA would review him and decide whether it’s a good fit or not. Once it was decided, we worked with Susan on an individual transition plan. We don’t just drop them off at the door and see you later. Over a period of weeks, I think it was like six weeks, he would go over after his day program. At first it was one day a week, then 2 days a week, then it was every day a week, and then all day on a Saturday. He spent more and more time in the house. They would ask ‘can you bring something to leave here? This is going to be your room’. He brought plush animals and clothes. Then we moved a twin bed in, a small dresser so he had a place to hang some of his stuff, and a little bookcase so he could have books. Eventually, it got more and more like home until the day that we moved him in. We went and visited him the next day to see how things were going. Now he’s been there for over 7 years. We see him a couple times a week. We pick him up from the program to have dinner and bring him back to Cypress before bed. It was a very individually planned transition and it’s what worked for us and for our son. We’ve seen tremendous strides in his level of independence after we moved him in. It turns out I was more than willing to do things for him that he can do himself. So that was delightful for us to see. 

I do want to comment on the idea of a ‘forever home’. I want everyone to realize that we do hope that Kevin can age in place to stay there for a very long time. But we’re also aware that if there were something to happen, that he was no longer appropriate for that program, we’d have to find a different place. We have won the lottery and he’s there and very happy, it’s been great for years, but nothing’s forever. At some point, I’m not gonna be able to live independently in my own home and we’ll have to do something. So it could be for a long time, but be aware that every 4 or 5 years you should evaluate how things are going.

Hadiyah: Thank you so much and I’m glad that you said that. Cause we’re just that time for our Q&A session. I just wanna thank you. I hear people in the chat already saying it. Thank you so much, Tina, for sharing your story. You brought up a very good point. When I named this webinar series Planning or Finding a Forever Home. It’s very important that the disclaimer over all of this is there is no such thing as a forever home. And as Jill and Susan and Tina and I were prepping for this particular webinar, they reminded me that we are not sitting in a forever home, meaning all of us as a community, everyone is aging and situations change all the time. So I don’t want to be misleading and I don’t want LSA to come off as misleading. When we say a Forever Home, there is no such thing as a forever home, but there can be a really, really good plan for a future that is long term and not temporary that does exist. 

When a family buys a home for their special needs loved one and they live in it with 24/7 support, which of the housing categories would this belong to? Can the client/child pay rent?

Jill: It would fit in number 5, a Community Home or Apartment with Regional Center-Funded Supports. So it’s not a home owned by an agency, it’s a home owned by the family or an apartment rented by the family. It’s your private property.

Yes, if you have one of these community homes I talked about here, you can see a couple of options in terms of paying rent or mortgage. You can private pay, for example, just out of your own pocket, through your child’s special needs trust, or through your child’s ABLE account. Or like winning the lottery, if you have a section 8 or a housing choice voucher from your local County Housing Authority that can pay the vast majority of the rent. Similarly, in new developments there are what are called set aside and they’ll be set aside, in many developments, some units for adults. Specifically, low-income adults with IDD and you will pay a very favorable rent. For example, you might pay $600 a month instead of $2,600 a month.

My own son, who’s 25 and has various very severe autism, is in one of these arrangements. I am in the property business. My property business owns a single family home in San Jose. He is the sole tenant of that home. He also has 24/ 7 care in that home. We call it a 1 person group home. We private pay all the housing, we don’t ask for any subsidy for that. But part of his 24/7 support is paid for by the regional center, some of it is IHSS, and some of it is private pay. 

Susan: Might I just add that LSA had entered into a model where a family purchased the home and leased it to us at below market rate. Then we came in, set up. and ran the home. And their son was able to move in or could have moved in but because of COVID they changed their mind. So there’s also that option, but it’s a little more, I don’t know if risky is the word I’m looking for. It’s that below market rate that becomes the challenge. But we have done that before with a home in Morgan Hill that a family purchased.

Is LSA the same type of organization as Housing choices or something different? Or do you work in coordination with each other?

Susan: I’m not the expert on this by any means but Housing Choices purchases homes and then finds providers to operate them. Whereas LSA purchases homes and we operate them. 

What about the limited conservatorship? Does that stay in effect with the parent?

Tina: We conserved Kevin at 18. So he remains conserved by us, that stays in place.

Jill: I don’t know of cases where the conservatorship is eliminated, except I have heard of very rare cases where the conservatorship by the parent is contested by the regional center. And then in that case, they’d have to go to court. It’s not something that happens automatically. They would have to go to court to reverse or undo the conservatorship. But that’s only in cases where the parent is maybe deemed unfit. 

Is there a link for how to start a Privately Owned Family-formed LLCs? Me and another two parents have wanted to do something like this.

Jill: I don’t know if there’s like a central website. There are various videos on the autism society SF Bay Area YouTube channel probably elsewhere where founders of these communities have explained how they are developed, how they operate.

You can also go to the website for the Family-formed LLCs and contact whoever their admins are.

How does the Bay Area Housing Corporation (BAHC) Legacy program work? Do they provide support as well as manage the home?

Jill: This is a brand new program. Right now it’s more conceptual, I don’t know if anybody’s actually donated their home yet. Bay Area Housing Corporation Is a nonprofit based locally that owns a lot of these homes that other operators come in and operate for those with IDD. What they’re trying to do is serve these clients who aren’t in group homes but want their children to continue living in their homes after the parents die. Basically you donate the home to the nonprofit. They operate the home with your child living in it, but also adding another child. They would build the regional center for the services that are provided. Does it mean that Bay Area Housing Corporation is actually providing the services? No, I think what they do is they contract that out. They deal with property management, all the staffing issues, supervision, etc. 

Once a family feels their child is ready, how long is the waiting list (generally speaking)?

Susan: So it’s not really a waiting list, we call it an interest list. Waiting list would imply that if you’re number 7, the 7th opening we have, you get to move in. Where really you could be number one on that list and not move into an opening because it was either a level that wasn’t compatible or because after diving in a little deeper, meeting the person, then meeting the individuals that live in the home it just wasn’t a good fit. So we look at our openings, we look at the people that live there, and we look to find somebody that’s gonna be compatible. It doesn’t have to be the same age or things like this, but for sure we wouldn’t want to put somebody in a home that’s startled by loud noises and was someone who’s very happy and loud all the time. There’s a lot of factors that go into deciding who’s going to move into that home. So it’s really an interest list instead of a waiting list. I encourage everybody to continue looking while they’re on the interest list.

I actually spoke to a woman 7 years ago whose son was going to be moving into one of our homes 7 years ago. But like Tina, she started the process early and then almost said yes, but then got nervous and then almost said yes, but got nervous. She said, ‘don’t take me off the list’. So finally, we called her again, she came out and we found the right home. She toured a couple of the homes that she just didn’t think would be great for her son. 7 years later, she came out and met everybody living in this home and they’re gonna be making that transition soon. Sometimes it happens quickly. Right now we have an opening in one of our homes. It’s a co-ed home that has been open for a while and I’m really surprised at that. So you just can’t ever tell. We do try to make contact at least once a year. If you email me, we’re in contact, and we get to know your son or daughter, the better we’ll know if they would be a good fit for a particular home. It’s really hard to answer that question as far as how long it takes. It could be tomorrow…

Tina: It could be years. 

Susan: Yes, like I said 7 years. 

Tina: Hopefully not 7 but yea it could be. 

Susan: That was partially because the mom wasn’t quite ready and was just looking for the perfect dynamics in the house and the perfect fit that was close to the day program. She finally found it.

What are the costs to come into an LSA home?

Susan: There is no cost to the family. The social security, that typically someone would get every month, goes towards that housing.

Tina: Yeah, I sign that over every month. I’m their representative payee and I’ve got an account so I just send that to LSA every month. We don’t pay anything. We happen to buy Kevin’s clothes and we pay medical co-pays. But if we couldn’t, the LSA would.

Susan: They’re allotted $192 a month out of their SSI. That goes to personal and incidentals. So if somebody wants to go to a movie, somebody needs some new socks, or somebody wants to go have pizza for lunch with their day program, those are the funds that are intended to cover those types of expenses. There really is no cost to families.

How does housing choice affect SSI? For example, if the parent provides housing does the SSI amount decrease? What if the parent pays any amount of rent or something like that?

Tina: Well, if the child lives with you, you get the minimum. If they have a separate address, if you have an ADU with a separate address, that’s considered a separate living situation and they would receive more SSI. I don’t know about how much they pay, you know, the rent part of it. 

Susan: I think some people get more SSI than others. And in that case, they have a share of the cost. So there are some guidelines and the best one that can help figure that out with you would be your service coordinator in the financial department at San Andreas.

Jill: SSI in the scheme of things is such a tiny drop in the water of the actual costs of caring for these individuals. Caring for my son through the course of the year is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yes, he gets SSI. Yes, I pay for his clothes, etc. with it but it doesn’t make a huge difference. 

When’s the next Autism Conference coming up?

Jill: Good question. In our infinite wisdom, we had scheduled it for October 12th which corresponded to the same October Saturday last year and the year before. Oops, that was Yom Kippur, which is a Jewish holiday. So now we have to change it. So hopefully we’ll be able to do it in November, maybe even December this year. We’ve held it every year for the past many years at Stanford.

I read VERY often about the abuses going on in special needs homes (financial, physical and sexual). What kind of preventative measures are in place, if any, at the various types of homes?

Hadiyah: I don’t want us to speak on every home. But I do hope, especially as a program director, you can speak to what we do at LSA, especially if financially and some of these other things to prevent abuse.

Susan: That’s a really good question and it’s a common concern for family members and for us because there’s always that possibility. 1st off, anyone that’s hired in any residential care facility goes through a criminal record background clearance. And so if they’ve been arrested or have a criminal record, they won’t be working in the home. And then when we start off with orientation, we cover abuse, recognizing abuse, and how to report it. Financially, because we are in most cases managing the person’s personal and incidental funds. We’re required, and this is a regulation as well so it’s going to be consistent wherever you go if it’s residential housing, to maintain a ledger. We keep funds separate from everyone else’s so there’s no co-mingling. We have to maintain an accurate balance in that ledger at all times, provide receipts, and have the residents sign that they indeed spent that money. Lsa has other safeguards in place as well. For instance, if they’re going to be making a purchase over a hundred dollars, we want to make sure that there’s a double signature on there and/or that it gets approved so that we’re managing their funds or helping them manage their funds responsibly. We do audits regularly. Where we’ll just sit down, count the funds with 2 people to make sure that it’s all accounted for and that there’s receipts for everything. 

We’re also required to maintain a list of the person’s belongings. So if somebody has a CD player, we put that on their list of belongings, the model number and the brand. Somebody has an iPhone. We list that on there. Somebody has a jacket. We list that on there. So all of their belongings are listed on. It’s their personal belongings inventory. And so we review that every quarter to make sure that everything that’s on that list is still there. That even includes wheelchairs and dentures. So we make sure that that inventory matches what’s really in the home. And, and then of course we have a theft and loss policy as well. So if something is missing. Which doesn’t happen as often as you might think. I mean, we might have a scare. ‘Oh, we can’t find Becky’s iPad’ and then we find out maybe somebody put it in the cupboard or on top of the cupboard because Becky was throwing it and they just felt that it was safer there right then. So it doesn’t happen like you might think because there are a lot of safeguards in place.

I’m just a firm believer that people that get into this line of work do it because they enjoy it. They do it because they want to be doing it, they do it because they’re compassionate and caring and so the likelihood just isn’t really there. But it is a common fear and I can see why.

Are there any available IDD housing to undocumented families as far as you know?

Jill: So they’re usually talking about a regional center client. What are the rules around regional centers taking in undocumented families? That I do not know. There are other benefits, however, housing benefits, food benefits, health benefits that I know have been provided to undocumented families. I don’t know other answers though.

Hadiyah: Tina and Susan, you’re shaking your heads no. Susan, do you know?

Tina: I have no idea.

Hadiyah: Okay, never been asked that question before myself, so I didn’t wanna jump in and say anything that was wrong. 

I heard group homes may go away because it’s too hard to find special needs residents with the same level. Is it true?

Tina: I can’t believe that would possibly be true, the need for housing far outstrips the availability. Now we did see a lot of homes closing around the pandemic, not because of the pandemic, but during that time frame because it got more expensive. But since the state did a rate increase a few years ago things are looking a little better. 

Do you see care staff change often over the last 7 years? Like 50% or more turnover rate or the staff that you saw 7 years ago are now gone and there’s a new crop of them that have turned over.

Susan: Many of our employees have been with us since LSA opened, have been there longer than I have. We do get some stragglers that come in. I think our turnover rate is 11%. So we do get some people that come in and they think that it’s a job that they can do, but then they soon realize it isn’t, or we soon realize it’s not a job they can do. But we have a great majority of our staff that have been there a long time. So it’s great because they can share their knowledge and expertise with people that come in that don’t have experience. Since the pandemic it’s really been a struggle. Thank goodness for our long-term staff because they’re those coworkers that are doing double shifts or picking up an extra day because they want to make sure that everybody is well taken care of and that their support doesn’t change just because our staffing has. 

Are there all female group homes?

Hadiyah: We do have an interest list that is directly on our website right now. We have a new home that’s opening sometime this summer that we’re really excited about. Please connect with us because we’d love to answer your questions. Will it be all female? We don’t know. We do have another home opening and I know that there’s a high likelihood that it could be all female. So we encourage you to go to LSA homes.org and to join our interest list, because it could be your loved one. 

Susan: And we have 3 other homes that are all female. 

Hadiyah: Things do change all the time. As we said before, there is no such thing as a Forever Home but we can definitely plan for a future that is more permanent. 

Hadiyah: I did wanna invite you all to join us again for another talk on Wednesday from 3 to 4pm. You can scan that QR code to join us. I do want to thank our panelists once again, Tina and Jill and Susan for joining us. The conversation just when we were rehearsing this was so lively and welcoming and informative. I’m hoping everyone who’s joined us today got the same thing out of it.

Join us for our home is where the heart is that’s on May 18th 2024 at the Campbell Community Center. We’re going to be celebrating 22 years and we’re going to enjoy ourselves. So come ask questions but also enjoy the atmosphere and donate. Please don’t be shy and help us to sustain for another 22 years. I just want to mention you can continue the conversation here with us at LSAHomes.org. These are our socials, we’re on X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you, please do email us at info@LSAhomes.org. 

Thank you to our partner SV@home who helped us put on this series of webinars for the next week for affordable housing month. We’re excited to be partnering with this very important partner in the South Bay, as well as all the other organizations that have stepped up in order to provide some insight and help parents. This is their information. Thank you again for joining us today! Thank you again so much for joining us Susan, Jill, and Tina, and we’ll see you on Wednesday.

Finding a Forever Home Video

Learn more about how LSA provides services for individuals with IDD