Issue link: http://southshoremagazine.uberflip.com/i/205938
health, wellness & business ~ RTR Twenty-Five Years of Making Lives Better Star of Excellence 2013 by Chris White What were you doing 25-years ago? Perhaps you were still in school? Maybe you were getting married? Perhaps you were becoming a parent for the first time or at the start of your career? Some of you may have been young kids in grade school or perhaps not even a gleam in your parents' eyes! Here at Road To Responsibility, Inc. (RTR) we were just taking our first tentative steps down the ongoing road to fulfilling our Mission of 'Making Lives Better' for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) on the South Shore. What had begun as a dream shared among friends around a dinner table became a reality in 1988. Initially, we focused on offering social opportunities…going out for a dinner and a movie; dances; bowling tournaments and small vacation packages all geared towards helping the individuals live more fulfilling lives in the community while also giving their families a little break. In short order, however, demand led to a major expansion of the services we provide. Within our first year of operations we were offering residential and employment services serving over 200 individuals every month. As time went on, we continued to grow both in terms of the numbers of people being served and the array of services being offered. Today we serve several hundred people from over 100 cities and towns in Massachusetts in a service area that stretches from Milton to Plymouth, over to Taunton and up to Randolph. In the mid-1990s we began offering day habilitation services (our Open Roads programs) and we are in the process of launching a new service model: community-based day services which will have a dual-focus of actively integrating participants into community activities during the day while also giving them the chance to continue to develop job skills for the purpose of obtaining a job in the community if they so desire. We are very excited about this new service and believe it will truly enhance the lives of people whose only employment goals are to obtain a job in the community while also providing them with enriching community-based activities on a daily basis. 52 We have always believed that everyone deserves the opportunities and supports needed to be fully engaged citizens in their communities. To do so we have proudly become leaders in the field in many areas: the safe, effective and positive treatment of individuals with complex emotional and behavioral issues (our integrated clinical model has been incredibly successful); we were the first agency in our service area to develop day habilitation programs for older, medically-involved persons; we had the first competitive employment program in the region allowing motivated individuals to move out of sheltered work settings and into regular jobs for regular pay; we established a series of social enterprises to provide different employment experiences to those we serve and we are now at the forefront of the national effort around the care for Individuals with Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of dementia. We are committed to providing as many different kinds of opportunities as we possibly can to afford those we serve the best chances for success in meeting their individual goals and dreams. RTR has also always been concerned with the whole person. It is not enough to simply provide excellent services in isolation. As such, we work diligently to really know the people we are serving…their friendships, their families, their health and their dreams. As such, we are fearless advocates for the people we serve. This commitment has driven the development of many new endeavors over the past few years. We saw that many people in our programs have real artistic talent but few avenues for developing their abilities so we started our Dream Gallery program. Here, artistically inclined people can receive instruction in their art and even make some money doing so by selling their artworks through our Ocean Village Book Store in Marshfield. Others