What Skills Can Habilitation Help Develop?
Your family member may seem as if she has gaps in her skill sets, especially if she’s had to learn other skills in place of ones you take for granted. Residential habilitation services can bridge that gap for her.
Social and Communication Skills
Getting along with others isn’t as easy as it looks, especially if the skills that other people take for granted are ones that your family member never really learned. Some developmental disabilities cause your family member to lag behind her peers. Mastering these skills now can be tremendously beneficial in other areas.
Skills Related to School or to Work
Skills that your family member needs in order to succeed in school or work settings are almost universally ones that she can learn with help. By practicing these skills over and over again, your family member is able to experience success on a level that she may not have been able to achieve before. That can be tremendously empowering.
Using and Managing Money
If your family member is finally able to start working at a job, she may be earning money for the first time. She’s going to need to know how to use money and how to manage it, on a daily basis and in longer terms, too. This is another skill that can be incredibly empowering for her, especially if she’s never really used money in the past.
Safety Skills
Safety is always important, for every single person. Understanding why certain things are unsafe to do in a particular way may be something that your family member needs to hear again and again. Once she does master keeping herself as safe as possible, she may be able to also do more and experience more freedom than she has in the past.
Personal Care Skills
Personal care skills are more complicated than most people think, especially since they learned to master most of those skills at a young age. But if your family member was unable to learn those skills until now, that’s okay. She can still become proficient at brushing her teeth, combing her hair, and getting dressed with minimal verbal prompts.
Learning How to Ask for and Get Help
There are plenty of adults who have a difficult time asking for help. You don’t want your family member to be in that same situation. Helping her to learn that it’s okay to ask for help and, even more important, the best ways to ask for help, can give her a skill that she finds helpful every single day.
Residential habilitation allows your family member to learn at her own pace and to repeat skills and tasks as many times as she needs to in order to become as independent as possible.
If you are considering therapy programs in Lawrence, 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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