Scottsdale Training and Rehabilitation Services, INC.

          Osborn Road Community Connections Program

Transportation Capacity Assurance Project  2003

The Scottsdale agency’s Community Connections Day Treatment & Training Program provides personalized individual and group instruction and experience to help adults with severe disabilities develop their highest possible functional living skills, such as behavior management, cooking, laundry, housekeeping, transportation, shopping, time organization, safety, grooming, socialization, and recreation.  In addition to offering training in the agency’s classrooms, the program’s unique teaching approach uses the community at large as a learning center to help clients acquire the knowledge, skill and confidence to function as independently as possible within the fabric of our society.  Moving about in groups of two to ten clients under the supervision and guidance of STARS professional staff, clients attend plays, concerts, movies and other entertainment events.  And they visit a myriad of our City’s organizations and businesses, including museums, libraries, shopping malls, restaurants, zoos, farms, hospitals, and utilities.  Through their active participation in these activities, clients not only learn about the wide variety of our community’s vast resources, but also develop appropriate and acceptable interpersonal behaviors – both among themselves and between themselves and society’s “third parties.”   

Of course, the agency’s ability to use the “community as a classroom” is driven by its capacity to provide safe and reliable transportation.  Unfortunately, one of the vans used by the agency’s Osborn Road Community Connections program is six years old, and has lately spent almost as much time in the shop as it has on the road.   Indeed, during July 2003, seven of the program’s 26 scheduled outings had to be cancelled because the wheelchair lift equipped van was unavailable. 

To address this issue, the organization has successfully secured a grant from the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) to cover 80% of the acquisition cost of a new, nine-passenger lift-equipped vehicle.  The agency seeks funding for the remaining 20% in order to take possession of the van and assure sufficient transportation capacity.