The reality of life for Adults with Developmental Disabilities

• 85% of Adults with Developmental Disabilities are Unemployed
• Even more don’t have a home of their own
• Disturbing increase of isolation, psychotropic drugs, suicide, incarceration and homelessness
• Parents are forced to quit jobs to stay home with their adult child
• Aging adults find themselves in emergency situations because parents can no longer care for them
• Every parent lies awake at night terrified about their child's future 
  
  Until each of them has a job, a social life and a home to call their own, they are powerless. It’s unacceptable that these exceptional adults don’t have the opportunity to create a life filled with purpose; a life of personal power.

​The starfish parable is our guiding belief:​

Strolling along the edge of the sea, a man catches sight of a young woman who appears to be engaged in a ritual dance.
She stoops down, then straightens to her full height, casting her arm out in an arc.

​Drawing closer, he sees the beach around her is littered with starfish, and she is throwing them one by one into the sea.

He lightly mocks her: “There are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see,
for miles up the beach. ​What difference can saving a few of them possibly make?”

Smiling, she bends down and once more tosses a starfish out over the water, saying serenely,
"It certainly makes a difference to this one."   -Anonymous