The Lucy Idol Center Specializes in "Never Will and Never Can" People
"Never will, never cans" are people whose futures and quality of life have been put on the impossible-to-achieve list by others who see a developmental condition, terrible accident, or disability as too great a challenge to overcome.
A tour of the Center and an exposure to the care being provided tells you that "never" isn't in Lucy Idol's staff, clients, or client families treatment vocabulary. And a waiting room papered with news accounts about the Center, stories of its successes, awards won, and profiles of staff offer a visual of why that is so.
The Center provides services to the most severely challenged and profoundly disabled persons. Individuals served by the Center cover the full gamut of rehabilitation needs: people with Multiple Sclerosis, mental retardation, traumatic brain injury, visual and hearing impairments, and multiple disabilities. The range of need can be seen in the array of wheelchairs mechanical, motorized or otherwise high tech adaptive rehab aids in every room. However, one doesn't hear about the degree of need from staff. Rather they are straightforward in telling the goal of their agency: to assist the disabled person to obtain the quality of life as close as possible to the norms and patterns of the mainstream of society. This is accomplished by assisting individuals to acquire and maintain those life skills which enable them to cope more effectively with the demands of their personal lives by raising the level of their physical, mental and social functioning.
In that regard, it is not unusual-even in the case of the most severe disability-to read in the individual treatment plan an objective like "to enhance community integration as well as to develop and maintain social relationships". Or to find in another treatment plan notes that indicate progress in achieving "development of functional skills that lessen dependence and that enhance the prospect of accessing social supports which promote successful functioning in the community". In non clinical jargon, those translate to a quality of life not envisioned or possible before treatment at Lucy Idol. A place where hope and potential are realized daily.
However, those are only obtained with courage and effort. The physical, mental and emotional energy required for treatment regimens tell what a labor of love it is for client, his family and therapist alike. As put by one visitor to the Center, "Just watching the therapies these clients go through exhausted me. I found myself doing the actions with them. The daily activities I breeze through are mountains that these people must climb each day."
Those mountains include a host of challenges such as physical therapy, stretching, balancing, gait improvement, weight bearing and wheel chair positioning. Then there is all the cognitive skill development, social - interactive behavior therapies as well as the family training and counseling. This is intensive stuff! A course in patience and real grit. One that requires a "no quit" commitment from the family, a dedicated staff and a brave multi-handicapped person.
The needs of the severely disabled people served at the Lucy Idol Center are complex. Meeting their needs demands the expertise and knowledge of many professionals. A glance at the treatments employed at the Center every day reflects that: physical therapy, exercise, individual, counseling, group therapy, family counseling, psychological assessment, testing, diagnostic services, interventions, activity therapy, recreational therapy, classroom work, and field trips. Then there is the full range of nursing care: medications, G-tube feeding, catheter care, suctioning and asthma interventions, infection control, health and diet monitoring, classroom instruction, and family counseling.
Those and more are provided with compassion and an unconditional love that can be felt upon entering the Center. Which is why Lucy Idol never has a "never will or never can" disabled client.
As printed in The Chronicle-Telegram 10/26/08
A tour of the Center and an exposure to the care being provided tells you that "never" isn't in Lucy Idol's staff, clients, or client families treatment vocabulary. And a waiting room papered with news accounts about the Center, stories of its successes, awards won, and profiles of staff offer a visual of why that is so.
The Center provides services to the most severely challenged and profoundly disabled persons. Individuals served by the Center cover the full gamut of rehabilitation needs: people with Multiple Sclerosis, mental retardation, traumatic brain injury, visual and hearing impairments, and multiple disabilities. The range of need can be seen in the array of wheelchairs mechanical, motorized or otherwise high tech adaptive rehab aids in every room. However, one doesn't hear about the degree of need from staff. Rather they are straightforward in telling the goal of their agency: to assist the disabled person to obtain the quality of life as close as possible to the norms and patterns of the mainstream of society. This is accomplished by assisting individuals to acquire and maintain those life skills which enable them to cope more effectively with the demands of their personal lives by raising the level of their physical, mental and social functioning.
In that regard, it is not unusual-even in the case of the most severe disability-to read in the individual treatment plan an objective like "to enhance community integration as well as to develop and maintain social relationships". Or to find in another treatment plan notes that indicate progress in achieving "development of functional skills that lessen dependence and that enhance the prospect of accessing social supports which promote successful functioning in the community". In non clinical jargon, those translate to a quality of life not envisioned or possible before treatment at Lucy Idol. A place where hope and potential are realized daily.
However, those are only obtained with courage and effort. The physical, mental and emotional energy required for treatment regimens tell what a labor of love it is for client, his family and therapist alike. As put by one visitor to the Center, "Just watching the therapies these clients go through exhausted me. I found myself doing the actions with them. The daily activities I breeze through are mountains that these people must climb each day."
Those mountains include a host of challenges such as physical therapy, stretching, balancing, gait improvement, weight bearing and wheel chair positioning. Then there is all the cognitive skill development, social - interactive behavior therapies as well as the family training and counseling. This is intensive stuff! A course in patience and real grit. One that requires a "no quit" commitment from the family, a dedicated staff and a brave multi-handicapped person.
The needs of the severely disabled people served at the Lucy Idol Center are complex. Meeting their needs demands the expertise and knowledge of many professionals. A glance at the treatments employed at the Center every day reflects that: physical therapy, exercise, individual, counseling, group therapy, family counseling, psychological assessment, testing, diagnostic services, interventions, activity therapy, recreational therapy, classroom work, and field trips. Then there is the full range of nursing care: medications, G-tube feeding, catheter care, suctioning and asthma interventions, infection control, health and diet monitoring, classroom instruction, and family counseling.
Those and more are provided with compassion and an unconditional love that can be felt upon entering the Center. Which is why Lucy Idol never has a "never will or never can" disabled client.
As printed in The Chronicle-Telegram 10/26/08
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