SPECIAL KIDS-SPECIAL FAMILIES INC
1915 Aerotech Drive No 100, Colorado Springs, CO 80916 www.sksfcolorado.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: Promote, strengthen, and support individuals with disabilities and their families. Our Vision is to give people in need the resources, compassion and freedom to achieve the life that everyone deserves. Our purpose is to support the family member, the person with the disability and their caregivers with services to those with limited resources.

Promote, strengthen, and support individuals with disabilities and their families. Our purpose is to provide support services to families who have a family member with a disability in a manner that provides opportunity to those in need with limited resources.

SKSF Host Home/Residential Program contracts with eligible host home providers to support, supervise and open up their homes to care for adults with disabilities who are eligible for the Comprehensive Medical Waiver. This program experienced continued growth of the number of clients we served, which allowed us to expand our host home staff to continue to offer our providers and clients a strong level of support services with 24 hour crisis intervention trainings, respite services, representative payee services, oversight of the progression of client life goals and objectives.

SKSF Foster Care Placement Services (placement of children). This program began in 2002 at the request of El Paso County Department of Human Services. A factor for the therapeutic nature of the foster care program is that there are a significant number of children in the foster care homes having intellectual and developmental disabilities. Families are recruited and trained to provide for the significant needs and challenges that the children often present. Foster families are located in the Denver Metro area, south on through Colorado Springs and Teller County on to the Pueblo area. Referrals are received throughout the state. The Foster Care program also contracts with Aspen Pointe Behavioral Health to provide planned and crisis respite for families they serve through the use of our foster homes. The foster program has started to accept private care respite requests from birth families and will utilize foster families. The program now is identifying particular families who frequent provide the respite service as family resource homes. In 2019 the Foster Care program outcomes maintains a factor having a higher than national average standard in preventing disruption of placements. This is an indicative skill and ability of our staff to provide significant prevention and intervention services. Our Foster Care Program experienced an increase in monthly placements in a stable and steady growth. The program improved quality of services through regular foster parent support in transportation services, in consistent monthly trainings and support group meetings. This in turn, has increased foster parent referrals. Benchmarks is a specialized part to the foster care program which recruits and trains families to accept youth and young adults with duel diagnosis. A target group of this program is the young adults with developmental disabilities. The foster care program is working closely with the adult residential program to aid young adults with disabilities in the foster care system to move into the adult host home program. Our goal is to help stabilize their lives and prepare the youth for community living.

SKSF Adult Day Services- I-CAN day program is a community based program, offering transportation from the individual's home to the program, as well as to access services in the community for individuals with disabilities. The clients work with an adult Services mentor with individual habilitation goals that are addressed in each given day. Our program encourages our clients to engage themselves within the community to help build their socialization and self-esteem by volunteering at various organizations such as overseeing the upkeep of Nancy Lewis Park, helping in the lunch room at Classical Academy School, helping at Pikes Peak Humane Society, and much more. Clients are also able to engage in recreation and physical activity by going to such locations as the zoo, YMCA, shopping, etc. Joey's Place is the facility based program which provides clients the opportunity for working on activities such as cooking projects, health and wellness with exercise classes (including yoga through The Smokebrush Foundation), academic work including an in depth holistic study of different countries each month to understand their culture, foods, and geography. We also have sign language classes, computer classes, and art classes. In 2013 we added a Joey's Place garden. Clients learn how to plant seeds, transplant and nurture to maturity. The clients loved picking the vegetables they grew and were able to incorporate them into their cooking classes. They enjoyed this activity so much that we have made it an annual event. In 2016 SKSF Adult Services saw growth in serving clients through the EBD (Elderly, Blind, Disabled) Waiver. Four clients are currently being served under this waiver program. Adult Services has an active volunteer group that volunteers at sites such as Restore, Springs Rescue Mission, Classical Academy, Cross Fire Ministries, and Care and Share. This program was selected by School District #11 as a choice for parents. 60% of all day program clients are transported to the program by SKSF transportation services. This program accepts individuals on Medicaid Waivers, as well as having some clients using the ability to pay to help working parents/guardians with adult children living in the home. Individuals have the option of choosing either the I-CAN program or Joey's Place or a combination of both in their given service plan. This program services an average of 75 adults. The adult day program has also been increasing the services to those individuals who choose alternative services such as learning budgeting, grocery shopping, social connections to help them gain access to their community. This community program assists individuals in their homes with connections when the traditional day programs may not be adequate to meet the individual's wants/needs. This program has grown from three clients in January 2019; to 14 clients in December 2019. In total, the day program serves an average monthly 79 clients.

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Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (public 990 form dataset) from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202041929349300244_public.xml