DOUGLAS ASSOCIATION FOR RETIRED CITIZENS (DARC)
DEVELOPMENTALLY
DISABLED TRAINING & SENIOR MEALS PROGRAM
DOUGLAS,
ARIZONA
Contact
Person: Gary Clark, Executive
Director
P.O.
Box 252
Douglas,
Arizona 85608
Phone: (520)364-7473
COMMUNITY
DESCRIPTION
Douglas,
Arizona is a community with a population of approximately 14,500 persons and is
located in the southeastern corner of Cochise County.
The Mexican border is only nine blocks from the offices of the Douglas
Association for Retarded Citizens (Douglas ARC).
Douglas
is a town born of the mining industry. Ore
mined in Bisbee, Arizona was transported to Douglas for smelting.
When the smelting operation was closed in 1985, the community of Douglas
suffered. Today, 23 percent of the population of Douglas remains unemployed.
BACKGROUND
HISTORY
The
Douglas Association of Retarded Children (DARC)
was established in 1958 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Historically, programs for the developmentally disabled (DD) tended to
center around craft projects. The
Executive Director of DARC became concerned that such skills were not enabling
DD clients to find independent employment and become less dependent on public
assistance. He wanted to provide
the opportunity for DD clients to gain self-esteem and a sense of value that
comes from being gainfully employed, so he initiated a project to train DD
clients in landscaping skills.
Although
landscaping provided job opportunities for some of the DD clients, not all
clients viewed this work alternative favorably.
Landscaping requires heavy manual labor and is conducted almost
exclusively outdoors. This made
landscaping less acceptable to some of the female DD clients and inappropriate
for those with certain health conditions. It
became apparent that if DD clients were to enter the public workplace as
employable citizens, the skills being taught needed to be acceptable to all. Since the goal
was to provide all capable DD clients job training in order to reduce dependence
on public assistance and to facilitate entry into the public workforce,
additional avenues of job training had to be explored.
PROJECT
INITIATIVE
Collaboration
The
Executive Director of DARC began to search for other training options and
discovered an opportunity within a social service agency in the community.
Catholic Social Services provides a daily noon meal for seniors living in
the community of Douglas. When the
Director of Catholic Social Services expressed a willingness to employ DD
clients trained in preparing, serving and delivering meals to seniors, a new
training program took shape. DD
clients would be trained to prepare and serve meals to seniors at the congregate
meal site and assist in the delivery of meals to homebound elderly persons. This was an unprecedented collaborative effort between two
nonprofit service organizations.
In
order to successfully initiate this project, DARC found it vital to establish an
open dialogue and positive rapport with the county health department.
Very specific guidelines, established by the county health department,
had to be met in the training of clients to provide meals to seniors. Each DD client eligible for training had to pass four written
tests in addition to being trained in preparing, serving and delivering meals.
The
need for written tests presented a major obstacle, since some of the DD clients
could neither read nor write and some were nonverbal.
It was virtually impossible to accurately assess their
knowledge using the established testing mechanisms employed by the county
health department. Working closely
with county health department officials, the Director of DARC was allowed to
review the four tests and condense them into a set of 40 questions that could be
answered with “yes” or “no” responses.
The condensed, modified test was administered one-on-one verbally to DD
clients. The county health department also found the condensed test
and the response format to be useful in assessing the knowledge of
non-English speaking individuals. Today, the department uses the condensed
questions for testing both DD and non-English speaking people for food handling.
Locating
a Facility
In
the early phases of this project, meals were prepared and served in the Catholic
Youth Center facility, which had a gym and kitchen. Because the facility and
kitchen utensils were borrowed, the program had no start-up costs.
Forty meals a day were provided to elderly community members at this
congregate meal site.
Over
the following two years, the meal program, along with the training program for
DD clients, moved to various churches in the community.
The county health department maintained a close association with both
programs and established an ongoing effort to help keep program standards
high as locations changed.
Eventually,
it became necessary to establish a permanent, independent location for the meal
and training program. A vacant
building in the downtown area of Douglas was chosen.
With funding assistance from a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)
and vocational rehabilitation funds, the building was renovated to meet county
health department requirements. A
new kitchen and a walk-in freezer were included in the renovation.
With
a permanent location and a ten-year lease, the training and meal programs
appeared to be off to a good start. However,
after approximately one year, the building was sold. The ten-year lease agreement was not honored by the new owner
and the programs had to relocate immediately.
The Catholic Youth Center offered to house the programs for one year.
At that time, more than 100 meals a day were being prepared, served and
delivered.
With
the programs temporarily relocated in the Catholic Youth Center, the search
began for a new facility. Among the
structures considered was a building that had housed the local hospital.
The building, vacant for approximately 15 years, had been built by the
Phelps-Dodge Mining Company. The company had constructed the hospital to serve
the community during the time when the mining smelting operation was a major
employer in the community.
The
DARC Board of Directors decided to approach the mining company with an offer to
buy the building. DARC had a total of $10,000 to offer for the entire hospital
complex. The mining company had stipulated that, for serious consideration,
offers should be a minimum of $250,000 for the structure. Nevertheless, a
proposal to purchase the building for $10,000 was submitted to the parent mining
corporation. Knowing their offer
was far below the stated minimum amount that would be considered, the Board of
Directors and Executive Director of DARC were astonished when informed by the
mining company that the building was being donated to DARC, with the stipulation
that it be used in the best interest of elderly and disabled members of the
Douglas community.
FUNDING
After
acquiring the hospital building, the next challenge was renovating the building
to meet the requirements of the county health department.
To identify potential
funding sources for the renovation, the Executive Director of DARC used the
local library to research philanthropic foundations that gave awards to
organizations in Arizona. A
foundation in Ohio was among those found to award monies within the state.
An application was submitted and a $10,000 grant was awarded from the
Ohio foundation. However, before
the foundation would forward the monies, it was stipulated by the foundation
that additional matching monies had to be raised by DARC. This stipulation posed a considerable challenge.
Three
major fund-raising efforts were instrumental in reaching the match amount: 1) an
Annual Mother's Day Cake Auction; 2) four bike races; and 3) a "Wall of
Hope.” The “Wall of Hope” was
conceived as a way individuals born in the old hospital could contribute to its
continued use and receive recognition for their efforts.
Individuals who had been born in the old hospital were contacted and
given the opportunity to buy a brick for $100.
These bricks were used to build the “Wall of Hope” and plaques were
inscribed with the names of the donors.
The
fund-raising efforts brought in the required $10,000 match.
With the $10,000 DARC had available, the monies from the Ohio foundation,
and the matching monies, a total of $30,000 was available for the renovations.
CHALLENGES
Skilled
Labor
The
$30,000 was not adequate to pay the skilled labor costs necessary to carry out
the renovation of the old hospital building.
This challenge was also approached creatively.
Because Douglas is home to a minimum security prison, prison labor could
serve as an affordable, available resource.
The major offense of most prisoners was a “driving under the influence”
(DUI). After reviewing the work
histories of the prisoners, it became apparent they comprised a skilled labor
force that could help to renovate the old hospital building.
The Douglas prison allowed prisoners to provide the labor for the
renovation of one wing of the old hospital building.
HUD
Regulations
In
an effort to fund the renovation and conversion of another wing of the old
hospital building into apartments, the director of
DARC, in collaboration with the Douglas Public Housing Authority, wrote a
grant application for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) HOME funding.
As a nonprofit organization, DARC had neither a credit line nor cash
flow. Partnership with the city
provided a viable source of cash flow for the application.
The HUD application was processed and within four months the money was
received. However, there were
stipulations regarding who could live in the apartments.
In
order to retain the funding and allow DARC some autonomy regarding occupancy,
the HUD contract was researched. It
was found that the Davis-Bacon Act governed occupancy stipulations where more
than eleven units were built using HUD monies.
However, if eleven units or fewer were constructed, they would not fall
under the HUD requirements and monitoring.
Consequently, the
apartments were made larger and eleven units were built.
The occupancy criterion for the eleven apartments is determined by DARC.
Currently, six of those apartments provide housing for seniors.
No
longer a recipient of HUD monies, DARC has supplemented its funding through
state funds as well as funds from the county lottery.
POSITIVE
OUTCOMES
The
renovation process provided not only a new facility for housing and programs,
but also resulted in other positive outcomes.
As the prisoners worked on the old hospital building, they became
familiar with the DD and the elderly citizens who would benefit from their
efforts. Their work became more
than labor. A sense of purpose
developed among the prisoners. For
example, those with artistic talents painted cartoon character scenes on the
walls in the kitchen as a special touch for the DD workers who prepared meals
each day.
DARC
held an award ceremony for prisoners when they were released.
Each prisoner received a framed certificate of appreciation, complete
with hugs from clients and staff. It
was common to find prisoners who had worked on the renovation giving their
families tours of the building. As
it became apparent that the prisoners were genuinely contributing to the
betterment of the community, the community began to view the prisoners with less
discomfort.
Earlier
this year, DARC developed a new transportation program to serve the community's
elderly population. The program
transports seniors to and from grocery stores and shopping centers, thus
allowing seniors without available transportation the freedom to continue to
shop for themselves.
The
DARC continues to provide training and employment for developmentally disabled
individuals, in conjunction with nutrition services for the community’s
elderly population. Developmentally
disabled clients prepare and serve more than 300 congregate meals daily as a
part of the DARC training and meals program.
A home-delivered meal component has been implemented in the Communities
of Bisbee and Douglas, with DD clients assisting in the delivery of more than
110 meals within one and a half hours each day. More than 50 of the DD clients
who have participated in the training program have been successful in securing
employment in private businesses in the community.