Introduction
People with intellectual disabilities often face challenges in everyday life. This condition is usually stated immediately after birth or in early childhood and generates certain difficulties both for people with mental disabilities and for their families. At the same time, numerous centers promote the integration of such people into society, offering care for their health and the well-being of their families. One such center is the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD). This non-profit organization helps individuals with intellectual disabilities acquire the skills needed to navigate various social situations and lead fulfilling lives.
Agency Mission and Core Services
The organization helps families raising children with mental disabilities cope with everyday challenges and find resources for joy and normalcy. Its mission is to help people with mental disabilities have as few social limitations as possible (Almalky, 2020). In achieving it, AIDD’s values include openness and focus on results. It is patient-centered, evidence-based, and proactive.
AIDD serves more than 50,000 people with developmental disabilities and their families in Arizona each year (Almalky, 2020). It provides various services, most of which are healthcare-related. Specifically, the agency provides counseling, social support, and tools for direct medication administration.
At the same time, therapy takes numerous forms, from relaxation training to intensive mental restructuring. Managing mental health and other medical conditions can provide skills and support to enrich a unique path to overall recovery and well-being (Zablotsky et al., 2019). The agency’s treatment team develops a unique and comprehensive recovery plan that incorporates both physical and mental activities.
Health Promotion and Environmental Support
Equally important are practices aimed at direct health promotion. Among these, first and foremost, is workplace training. At first glance, it is unclear how this activity contributes to health promotion, but such training greatly changes people with mental disorders. They achieve goals, develop a sense of self-worth, and, most importantly, acquire self-care skills and the ability to work (Zablotsky et al., 2019). The agency offers counseling for relatives and group classes that discuss the importance of keeping people active.
Environmental support is an equally important part of the therapeutic process within the organization. At AIDD, it is primarily concerned with the culture of nutrition. Within the AIDD framework, there are specific guidelines that include information on food choices inside and outside the institution. The food provided directly by the organization is labeled and contains nutrient information in an easy-to-follow format (Almalky, 2020). The products are placed in easily accessible locations, and the emphasis is on informing patients and their families about the importance of good nutrition.
One of the agency’s primary responsibilities is to ensure that sufficient resources are available to support the health program. These resources, first and foremost, include financial ones, such as contracts with suppliers of equipment and necessary instruments. AIDD provides a wide range of services that require significant materials, which are obtained through sponsorships.
Equally important are the resources available in the local community to support the implementation of the health execution strategy. For example, experts from local hospitals or universities can be called upon to conduct seminars on health promotion (Havercamp et al., 2019). Furthermore, local sports organizations can provide access to fitness facilities for physical activity.
Organizational Culture and Workforce Development
AIDD’s organizational culture is characterized by clarity and unity of purpose and mission. The agency is focused on improving patients’ lives and breaking down barriers, thus committing to enhancing health. Several key features characterize the organizational culture’s structure. The old hospital hierarchy opposes the democratization of the treatment team, which is with its patients.
Patients influence one another during group activities and work therapy, and their cooperation contributes to rehabilitation. The staff wants to encourage them to behave in a way that will help them adapt to society. A third important factor, based on these two principles, is a healing atmosphere in which every effort is made to activate the patient’s personality.
Organizational culture also consists of basic factors that influence employee satisfaction. The staff has clearly defined tasks and responsibilities within the agency. Staff incentives primarily focus on supporting their professional development and training. A strong culture not only fosters the loyalty of existing employees and helps attract new ones but also becomes a key attribute of a medical facility’s competitiveness (Zablotsky et al., 2019).
Distribution of workload is equally essential; the organization’s management seeks to create a schedule that prevents burnout. At the same time, excessive workload is still an issue for AIDD. The fundamental principles of corporate culture revolve around meeting patients’ needs, maintaining low costs, and upholding work ethics.
A special role is given to employees’ knowledge and skills within the AIDD culture. All agency workers understand that therapy should focus on the human being in all its manifestations. The essence of the approach lies in planning the entire care process based on individual requests, patient needs, and health improvement (Zablotsky et al., 2019). All agency employees regularly participate in health maintenance seminars and training; they also understand the need to involve the patient in the care plan. Advocates of this approach strive to further develop the science of care for individuals with mental illness and to improve practice in this area, in which nurses play a crucial role.
Particular attention is paid to staff training, particularly during the recruitment process, with a thorough review of their knowledge of various diseases and their unique characteristics. Agency personnel must understand the specifics of each individual’s behavior and use this knowledge to develop a specific approach to the individual and their family. All staff members are trained in the most advanced techniques and approaches to patients with mental disabilities. The staff members are aware of the importance of health promotion and, without exception, promote healthy lifestyles (Zablotsky et al., 2019). The staff at AIDD understands the need to integrate people with mental disabilities into the community and implement all measures to ensure patients can self-care.
Strengths, Barriers, and External Challenges
In modern social development conditions, it becomes increasingly evident that providing a quality of life for people with disabilities requires developing personal and life competencies. On this path, the main task is not to address external objects but to study the qualitative dimension of being, concerning the inner world of a person and the spiritual dimension of their being (Prasher & Janicki, 2019).
It is this approach that underlies the work of AIDD; at the same time, it is its strength, given the whole staff’s understanding of the inner dignity of the person with pronounced intellectual disabilities. The institution’s strength, which will directly impact health promotion, is its holistic therapy practice, which enables individuals to be more independent.
All the aspects mentioned above contribute to improving the quality of life of patients and their families. Still, they are also aimed at finding new methods and technologies of treatment, taking into account the principles of a person-centered approach (Havercamp et al., 2019). Another important strength is the agency’s information policy. Informing society about the characteristics of mental disorders and ways to involve families in the therapeutic process is one of the agency’s most critical aspects of work (Almalky, 2020). However, despite the many strengths of the agency’s activity, there are also barriers.
As a result of the analysis, the intensity of external environmental factors’ influence on AIDD’s activity was determined. It was found that factors such as poor marketing work and insufficient information focus on patients indicate the average intensity of influence on the agency’s activities.
Despite the agency’s wide range of services and practices, marketing plays too little of a role, which can exacerbate the funding process. People with mental disabilities and their families require a significant amount of resources, which implies the involvement of sponsors (Prasher & Janicki, 2019). However, outreach events are insufficient to raise public awareness of the issue.
At the same time, the issue of recruiting medical personnel is equally pressing. The professional activity of medical workers involved in treatment and rehabilitation is characterized by high emotional intensity and a high percentage of stressors. The complexity of the work leads to staff turnover, which can also result in financial losses (Havercamp et al., 2019).
Working in a center requires a long training period, and dismissing trained employees is a barrier to AIDDs. Working in an organization is challenging because of the many people you are responsible for. AIDD should reconsider its approach to motivation and reward systems to keep valuable staff within the agency.
References
Almalky, H. A. (2020). Employment outcomes for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities: A literature review. Children and Youth Services Review, 109, 104656.
Havercamp, S. M., Krahn, G. L., Larson, S. A., Fujiura, G., Goode, T. D., Kornblau, B. L., & National Health Surveillance for IDD Workgroup. (2019). Identifying people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in national population surveys. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 57(5), 376-389.
Prasher, V. & Janicki, M.P. (2019). Physical health of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Springer International Publishing.
Zablotsky, B., Black, L. I., Maenner, M. J., Schieve, L. A., Danielson, M. L., Bitsko, R. H.,… & Boyle, C. A. (2019). Prevalence and trends of developmental disabilities among children in the United States: 2009–2017. Pediatrics, 144(4).