What Happens in Residential Habilitation?
Skill acquisition can be difficult for people who have developmental disabilities. That’s why residential habilitation is an important service for individuals and for their families. It provides a way for your family member with developmental disabilities to safely learn skills that will serve them now and in the future. But what really happens in residential habilitation?
Goal Planning and Tracking
The first step in habilitation is getting clear about goals for your family member. Without goals, it’s impossible to target the most important areas in building skills and finding the right services for your family’s needs. Keeping track of goal progress is also crucial, so that goals can be adjusted or marked off as achieved. Once goals are met, it’s easy to then start to build on those successful accomplishments and face new goals and challenges.
Skill Development
Habilitation at its core is primarily about developing and learning skills that are new and necessary for daily living. These skills help to increase independence and build upon each other. Some of the skills might involve learning daily living skills, learning how to be safer at home and in other places, increasing mobility, and developing self-advocacy. As your family member masters some of these skills, it becomes time to move on to others, like relationship building, mastering independence in transportation, and even developing job skills.
Therapeutic Services
Some of these skills, like increasing mobility or improving speech, may need additional assistance for your family member to reach goals. Physical, occupational, and speech therapy are all examples of the types of therapeutic services that residential habilitation can help to facilitate. Building skills takes time and effort, so it helps to have experts guiding that process along the way.
Reminders for Existing Skills
Habilitation also helps to cement existing skills that might be newer. Having prompts or reminders for skills already learned helps with mastery, especially when those skills are on the more complicated end of the scale. Things like social skills may also seem to be different in different situations on the surface, so it helps to have reminders to fall back on while still gaining mastery over them.
Residential habilitation is there to help your family member to gain the skills that she needs in order to improve her quality of life and to bolster her ability to be independent. These skills are best mastered in a supportive environment where your family member feels secure.
If you are considering RHS in Beech Grove, IN, please call the caring staff at RSI Cares. Serving Greater Indianapolis Area. Call for Immediate Info & Assistance: 317-471-0750.
As a practicing Registered Nurse, Etelka was keenly aware of a void in quality patient care that could be provided in the home. She embarked upon a journey to develop a home health care agency that would exceed all expectations and become a trusted partner to physicians and patients.
A Distinguished Career From Nurse to Director of Nursing to President of Home Services Unlimited
Etelka’s distinguished career followed a logical progression to her position as President of Home Services Unlimited. She graduated as a nurse practitioner with a Bachelor of Nursing (RN) in 1972 from Meshgorya University in the Ukraine, close to where she lived with her family. She married her husband Phil in 1973 and decided in 1977 that they would relocate to the United States to be closer to family and to come to this land of opportunity. With an eagerness to continue her budding career, Etelka sat for and passed her Boards in the U.S. in 1979.
A Love and Talent for Working with the Elderly
Etelka began her nursing career in the U.S. at Colonial Crest, now part of Golden Living, where shewasthe In-service Coordinator, the Director of Training and Education and Director of Nursing, a position she occupied for several years.
With a group of partners, she co-founded Adept Corporation, which operated group homes for the mentally challenged. The business was successful and in 1996, Etelka sold her share to return to her roots, caring for the elderly.
In January of 1997, Etelka opened Home Services Unlimited as a fully licensed business to provide home health care. In her quest to learn to do better for her patients, she had already obtained a Masters in Healthcare Administration (MHA) in May of 1990 from the College of St. Francis. As President of Home Services Unlimited, Inc., Etelka guides the trusted, experienced care model Home Services Unlimited uses to continue providing excellent home health care.
Giving Back to the Community of Indianapolis
Volunteering for community services is a high priority for Etelka. Her memberships include the Indiana Association of Rehabilitation Facilities, Executive Women in Health Care and the Indiana Association for Home and Hospice Care, where she is a member of the Board of Directors.
Etelka has also served on the Board of Directors with Hooverwood Home, a highly regarded geriatric facility, since 1997 and as the President for 2005-2006. Through her community work, she has received several awards and accolades, including the Nora McFarland award in 2002, from the Indiana Association of Home and Hospice Care.
Etelka was honored as a “Health Care Hero” by the Indianapolis Business Journal. The issue can be read online here:
http://mags.ibj.com/activemagazine/welcome/html/ibjhch.html.
After clicking on the link, then click on the image of the issue’s front page. After that, you can browse through the issue or click in a box near the top of your internet browser to adjust the page to 17, which is where Etelka’s article appears.
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