About Us
All four CSIs (Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Northern Virginia) support people who live independently, but receive drop-by supports. Persons supported in this manner include persons with mild mental retardation and persons with acquired brain injury.
Persons who live independently receive fewer than 24-hour supports. Instead, they receive a negotiated and planned number of hours of support over a week's time, depending upon their skills, degree of independence, and complexity of personal issues and lifestyle. Usually the number of hours/week does not exceed 40, but there are notable exceptions.
CSI staff plan carefully and ingeniously to apportion their hours of support, tailoring the nature of supports to each person. For example, it may be necessary to give persons a medication reminder. The reminder could be generated by setting a watch alarm, by making a telephone call at the appointed hour, or by setting up a daily "pill box manager," as preferred by the person supported. This is only one example of many which are applicable in helping to support persons living alone.
The flexible hours of support provided coincide with problem solving needs. For example, if a person is having difficulty achieving community integration, two hours might be set aside on a week-day evening to attend an advocacy group (e.g., People First), a church social, or a sports league. In this case, accompanying staff will take every effort to help the person find community integration by one means or another, realizing that it may take several efforts to do so.
Hours of support may also be devoted to attending a medical appointment, helping to reconcile a check book at month's end, helping to frame the coming week in a Weekly Planner, or helping with other meaningful tasks. The objective is not simply to provide companionship, but to support skill building and problem-solving.
Over time, there may be a decrease in the number of CSI staff hours required to support a person. "Natural" (i.e., unpaid) support from a family member, church member, or other acquaintance may substitute, or the person may have acquired the skill sufficiently to act alone.
CSIs welcome the opportunity to provide drop-by supports to qualifying persons who may self-refer, or may be referred by government agencies or Individual families.
