Sunshine Communities has opened two new fully-accessible homes for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities. These Family Care Homes in Toledo offer opportunities for more independent living and meaningful connections to the community - to neighbors, faith groups and local businesses. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / PRURGENT
Sunshine Communities has opened two new fully-accessible homes for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities. These Family Care Homes in Toledo offer opportunities for more independent living and meaningful connections to the community - to neighbors, faith groups and local businesses. This "community integration" is part of a national movement to help people with disabilities connect with communities around them. It has been at the heart of Sunshine's mission -- creating community -- for decades.
In addition to its 20 Family Care Homes in Lucas and Fulton counties, Sunshine offers housing at its Maumee campus and in supported housing, where individuals with disabilities live on their own or with family members or roommates. The Maumee nonprofit also offers vocational services in several Ohio counties, and Sunshine often receives this question: Do you create jobs for the disabled? In fact, Sunshine owns and operates two retail sites, Georgette's Grounds & Gifts and Sunshine Studios in Uptown Maumee, not only to create jobs for workers with disabilities, but also to spark connections that form relationships in the local economy between people of all abilities. Sunshine offers jobs at its main campus as well. At this campus, workers with disabilities spend time alongside job coaches in areas such as coffee packaging, recycling and shredding, laundry and dish services, the greenhouse and barn. Sunshine also offers job coaching for workers who would prefer to work elsewhere in the community.
Additionally, Sunshine offers clinical, spiritual, and recreational services. In all Sunshine supports more than 400 men, women and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Northwest Ohio as well as their families and loved ones.
In March, 2018, the two new Family Care Homes were opened as part of a successful capital campaign known as Amazing Happens Here Every Day, or simply, the Amazing campaign.
In all, Sunshine will open five new Family Care Homes as a result of generous community support for the campaign. The two homes opened in March feature eight private bedrooms - one for each resident, and open, accessible spaces for wheelchairs and other adaptive devices. These single-story structures are located on Olimphia Road in Toledo, near Little Flower Catholic Parish. This Toledo community, which includes St. Benedict Catholic School, has welcomed the homes since they were proposed in 2015. In that time, Parishioners have met and begun to root friendships with many of the 16 residents who were living at Maumee's Maumee campus until March when the residents moved into the new Olimphia homes.
For more information, contact Robin Erb, Vice President of Communications at 419-340-3604. | 
