Center seeks to put disabled clients at ease
It's 10 a.m. on a weekday and things are beginning to roll at Woodland Community Options.
Some of the center's clients are dabbing paint onto drawings that will be added to the elaborate wall of Halloween decorations that is growing by the minute.
Others are leaning over in their wheelchairs, trying to feed themselves or to manipulate specially designed toys.
All activities take place with the help of attentive aides, some of whom gently guide clients' hands.
"All of our clients are nonverbal, so we have to find other ways to communicate with them," said Joan Herrera, the center's program manager.
At this day program for people with disabilities, each activity is designed to exercise clients' fine or gross motor skills or their verbal or nonverbal communication skills.
The activities also strengthen emotional bonds between caregiver and clients.
"We're like a family unit," said Christie Copeland, Woodland Community Options program supervisor. "If we're not here, what would happen to them?"
Copeland praised center clients, especially Nathan Levy, 25, who must go to dialysis every other day.
"He always comes in happy. He never complains. He's always on the go," Copeland said.
The center is a program of United Cerebral Palsy. Some clients cannot sit up in chairs and must lie back in special wheelchairs. Copeland is hoping that Book of Dreams readers will help them buy a leaf chair, which is a suspended canvass chair that wraps around a person's body.
The leaf chair would be especially good for clients such as Tolah Bryan, 87.
"She has so many aches and pains, that to put her in a leaf chair would provide her with so much comfort," Copeland said.