09/03/2024 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities. I'm also a resident, as you heard, of North Olmsted. I have been here for 13 years. I'd like to take just a few minutes to reintroduce you all to Cuyahoga County DD and talk about the work that we do. Our mission is to support and empower individuals with developmental disabilities to live, learn, work, and play in the community. We support more than 14,000 people with developmental disabilities in Cuyahoga County, and last year, we served over 300 residents in North Olmsted. Two-thirds of our $150 million budget comes from a 3.9 mil continuous levy that was last passed by voters in this county in 2005. From birth through adulthood, we support people with DD to live their best lives. We provide things like early intervention services, therapies like occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy, consultative services to support students in our schools, transition services for young adults, housing and employment supports, and assistive technology services, to name a few. We are a different agency than we were even five years ago. At the end of 2019, just before COVID, Cuyahoga DO privatized its day program and transportation services. Services that were a visible, tangible way for people to recognize us in the community and know who we were and what we did. Since then, we've repositioned the agency as a leader in the state when it comes to supporting people with developmental disabilities to live, learn, work, and play in the community. Here are a few notable examples. In 2023, we launched a program with CSU called CSU Rise, which aims to give students with disabilities a typical college experience, while ensuring they're supported in ways that will help them be successful in college and beyond. We're doing innovative work in housing. In 2022, we launched our TriTech Apartments in Lakewood that allow adults with disabilities the opportunity to sign a short- term lease, to live with technology, to determine what types of technology and adaptive equipment can help them live more independently or as independently as they want. Later this year, we will open our first tiny home for people with developmental disabilities. This home will give someone the independence they want with the security of knowing they can socialize or seek support from provider staff by simply crossing the yard and going to the main house. We also partner with other youth -serving agencies like Department of Children and Family Services, Family and Children First Council, and the Adams Board to support young people in crisis. Together in 2022, we opened the T Suites, and we are active planning partners in the county's Children's Wellness Campus. We invest in communities in new ways. Since 2021, we've granted $700,000 to support 50 community libraries, arts and culture and recreation and leisure organizations in making their programs and physical spaces accessible to people of all abilities. We have over $200,000 allocated for these types of grants in 2024. In addition to our work supporting people with developmental disabilities in Cuyahoga County, we strive to support more people and strive to be a resource for communities, and we welcome the opportunity to talk more about how we can best support the residents of North Olmsted. Thank you for your time. Council President Brossard: Thank you. Seeing no other comments from the audience, we will now move into legislation. 09-03-24 Council Meeting Minutes - Page 11