What do I need to do to open a day program, for people with mental retardation?

Question

I want to provide vocational & daily living skills training to people with mental retardation, and mabe mental health services.

Answer 1

The term mental retardation is rarely used any more. The correct term is Developmentally delayed.

To develop a day program, you need to consider the following;
What type of programs do you want to offer, and how your going to implement them. You will need to do this, to show investors and met authority bylaws etc.
The venue - do you want to rent or build, where is the best place to have it, the set out of the venue, what type of furnishings or equipment do you require, and is it safe and secure.
Does it met local authority regulations or legislations e.g OH & S (Occupational Health & Safety).
What permits do you require, you will need to check with local authority bylaws.
Workplace Policies & procedures, feed back forms and grievance procedures etc. These will help maintain consistency of service, and meeting the on going needs and wants of your clients.
Quality staff with relevant qualifications, as well as police screening, this protects the clients and you as the employer.
Staff training, and workplace orientation so staff are familiar with the workplace.
You will also need to ensure that staff have First Aid training.
And how big is your budget going to be, to get this off the ground.

I can't think of anything else, but your work is cut out for you. Ideally you should consult with, a disability services, council or local authorities, investors etc, so as to met each other and talk about what the aims and outcomes are to be.

Good luck

Answer 2

Start by going to observe programs that others are successfully running. You will learn much from this. Observe what works and what does not work. You'll see what works for one person is not the answer for everyone. So you'll need to be resourceful, be creative to plan many ways and activities to reach a goal.

Daily living skills are very different that vocational skills. Tackle them one at a time. Everyone who needs to learn daily living skills can use your help. Not as many need training in vocactional skills. Look around to see how many
people there are who may need your help.

Day habilitation (teaching daily living skills) is almost always done away from a person's residence. So you'll have to have transportation for folks to get to and from. You'll need to look at staff to participant ratios required. Square footage for the building is probably in print somewhere.

Go on line and fine your State office of developmental disabilities and ask for the guidelines. This is who will probably pay for the service - they'll let you know.

good luck

Answer 3

first learn that mental retardation is not the term for people with developmental disabilities