By:Joseph Kellard
AHRC program will benefit elderly, needy in Oceanside area
The Oceanside community has a new neighbor. The Brookville-based Association for the Help of Retarded Children has opened another of its Long Island-wide hub sites in the Madison shopping center on Mott Street.
The mission of AHRC, which offers various programs including educational, vocational and family support, is "to meet the needs of children and adults with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities by providing community-based programs and services, as well as guidance and support for families."
Donna Marando, coordinator of the new hub site in Oceanside, said, "We strive to make the developmentally disabled independent members of society." The program she will direct is Next Step Day Habilitation, which provides adults 21 years old and above with social and vocational training through community volunteerism, skill building and recreation.
Within coming weeks, 20 individuals with disabilities will operate out of the Oceanside site. Currently they are being trained to volunteer such services as delivering food to needy and elderly people, food shopping for homebound elderly, serving lunch to senior citizens, running a thrift shop and working at hospitals and nursing homes. They will perform these and other services in and around the Oceanside community. Others will volunteer at the Mineola Courthouse Library, placing magnetic stickers on law books and doing light maintenance work.
One person, Albie Ross of Long Beach, has already volunteered through AHRC.
"I'm definitely happy to be here," he said about the new Oceanside site. "I've worked at Huntington Hills. We take the elderly from their rooms over to physical therapy. I like talking to the people most. That's what I like about it."
Huntington Hills Center for Health and Rehabilitation in Melville is a 320-bed nursing home that has AHRC volunteers perform such tasks as delivering mail and newspapers to residents, cutting labels in the dietary department and photocopying.
"I absolutely adore them," said the nursing home's volunteer coordinator, Jeanette Ferraro. "When they aren't here, we are lost without them. Our staff has become spoiled by them because they do many of the little things that we do but that make a big difference."
"It's nice to have the volunteers work with us and we have a great, long-standing relationship with AHRC," said Karen Toback, director of recreation at Sands Point Nursing Home. "They come in and assist the staff directly. They spend time with residents in the rooms, perform transporting, bring book carts to them, and set up for various events. We try to tailor the tasks we give them based on their functionality. Some will do gardening. When we have people who are higher functioning, we assign them to do book cart."
Wajiha, who is being taught how to cook at the Oceanside site, is another experienced volunteer. "I've done Meals-on-Wheels at St. Francis Hospital. I serve meals to the patients there. I ask them how they are and say 'Have a nice day.' I like it."
"What we are trying to do is to develop their skills and have them included in the community, and to work against the stigma some people have against the developmentally disabled," Marando said.
In addition to its basic mission, AHRC states that its programs and services "enable individuals with developmental disabilities to ... not be limited by the judgments of others ... and to do for themselves," rather than others doing for them because it is more convenient.
Among the everyday skills that Next Step Day Habilitation will train its volunteers in are money management, which will foster greater independence in those who participate in the program, Marando said.
AHRC has seven Next Step programs in Nassau County. It plans to open another facility in Oceanside in September, the location of which has yet to be determined. These hub sites are being opened in Oceanside, Marando believes, because of the many resources it and surrounding communities can provide for the volunteers. For one, the Long Beach area will provide an ideal place for recreational activities, she said.
"All of the people we have met have been very nice and accepting of us," Marando said about the business owners in AHRC's new hub site at Madison shopping center.
Nassau AHRC programs are administered through a variety of divisions and currently serve more than 2,000 people daily, from newborns to senior citizens. It is an association with more than 8,600 members and overseen by a volunteer board of directors that works closely with executive staff to ensure that the goals and the mission remain consistent and strong.
AHRC seeks strictly non-profit organizations that would like the services provided by its volunteers. For information, call Donna Marando at (516) 536-0069 or Leora Quere at (516) 293-2016, ext. 626.
