Nonotuck helps families keep loved ones out of institutions

[media-credit id=3 align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]LEE – Since its founding in Easthampton more than 40 years ago, Nonotuck Resource Associates, Inc., have helped change and enhance the lives of hundreds of people with intellectual disabilities by offering shared living in private homes instead of institutions.

In 2006, the organization, now based in Florence, began offering an adult family care (AFC) component to give families options and to help them keep loved ones with Alzheimer’s, autism, brain injuries, cancer, muscular dystrophy and other intellectual and physical disabilities at home.

Shared living with non-family members is also an option offered by Nonotuck.

These days, Nonotuck has 10 offices from The Berkshires to the Cape and will open an 11th in Boston within the next few months.

Lee office opens

The Lee office opened three months ago at 14 Park Place and is located in the E. Bosworth House, a handsome white house with a large front porch.

It formerly served as the former Pennysaver offices. Remodeling of the 1901 house, which has large rooms and wooden floors, has been taking place.

Kitty Curtin, a Lee native, is the organization’s director of nursing and adult family day care services. (Her original name is Kathleen Kelly but everyone knows her by the name “Kitty,” she said.)

A total of 500 people, 450 of whom are sub-contracted, are currently being served by Nonotuck’s AFC program, including 40 people in The Berkshires.  There’s also a Nonotuck office in Pittsfield.

Nonotuck saves state money

The organization is adding 10 people a month, saving the state millions of dollars in institutional care, said George H. Fleischner, the executive director of Nonotuck.

The agency has 120 employees.

Services offered by the AFC help keep families together, save Medicare and Medicaid money and prevent institutionalization, Mr. Fleischner said.

Nonotuck’s AFC program “supports each family so they may have a desirable home and home life.”

Case management, nursing and financial supports are offered. Caregivers can be family members, a good friend or a chosen housemate.

Family members trained

Caregivers, including those who are family members, are trained to give the supports their family members need.  In the case of a person who has cancer, for example, that might include teaching how to give injections as well as teaching about medical nutrition, Ms. Curtin said.

The AFC assistance provides families and their loved ones with all the help needed to complete daily activities such as bathing, eating, and toileting, all in a dignified manner, according to the agency’s AFC brochure.

Eligibility requires a prospective participant to be at least 16 years of age or older, be eligible for MASS Health and be willing to participate in the AFC program.

Nonotuck has a long history of humanitarian service. The organization was started in 1972 by a group of parents who had children in the former Belchertown State School. They wanted community residential placements for their children as an alternative to institutional living. They opened a small home in Easthampton for children with intellectual disabilities, Mr. Fleischner said.

Also a shared living provider

Ms. Curtin, Nonotuck’s nursing and adult family day care services director, has also served for the past 17 years as a shared living provider for Nonotuck. In 1996, she was working as a registered nurse in a state-operated group home in Stockbridge. One of the residents of the home, “Dan,” lived at the former Belchertown State School for 50 years before being placed at the home.

Although unable to speak, he and Ms. Curtin developed a friendship, and she decided to provide a home for him, through Nonotuck, with her children who, at that time, were two and four years old. They are now aged 21 and 19 years.

Not like a job

It felt “natural and right” to provide a home for Dan, Ms. Curtin, a pretty, slightly built, blonde woman, said. It does not feel like it’s been work or a job these past 17 years.

Three full-time people from the state help with his care in addition to Ms. Curtin’s siblings and father, Thomas “Tom” Kelly.

Today, Dan is 81 years old and is a well-known figure in Lee, Ms. Curtin said. He’s very healthy and communicates by signing.

“We have no issues communicating,” she said.

He attends a program in Pittsfield that’s similar to adult day care.

Dan helps wash dishes in the home and is neat and tidy.

Part of the family

“He doesn’t miss a trick,” Ms. Curtin said.

He loves watching television and listening to music in his room at home. He’s an extremely important member of the Curtin family as well as of the extended family.

Mr. Fleischner said people who meet Dan get more from him than he gets from people.

“The care provider is the ‘get’ provider,” he said. Dan has become part of the Lee community, he said.

Everyone at Nonotuck talks about “love” all the time, Mr. Fleischner said. “It’s a mutuality of love.” That’s what helps overcome stigmas and behaviorisms.

Asked if she would continue serving as a shared living provider, should Dan, age 81, die, Ms. Curtin’s eyes filled with tears.

“I don’t even want to think about that,” she said.

Her love for Dan has deepened and grown over the past 17 years he has lived in her home.

A strong bond has resulted.

Posted by Susan M. Wicker Guerrero on March 7, 2013. Filed under Community News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry