House to Serve Special Needs Young Adults in West Des Moines

Five young adults with special needs will have a new place in West Des Moines to call home next year.

Mainstream Living Inc., an entity founded in 1975 by parents who wanted additional community living options for their disabled children, will break ground on its third group home in spring 2012. The house, located on Lincoln Street, will be completed in late 2012.

The home will serve the needs of a fraction of the nearly two dozen disabled individuals on a waiting list for special needs housing, and more than three dozen more who will age out of a program next year and have no place to go.

The home will be called the Knapp House, after businessman William Knapp II, who donated the land on which it will be built.

It costs about $1 million, including land acquisition, to build each of the homes because of the medical equipment and handicapped accessibility that is involved.

About half of the money or items needed to construct the home have been raised or donated, said Loretta Sieman, a consultant who has been hired to help with the fundraising efforts.

Sieman said many people who cannot give money have donated services or items toward the house, such as concrete or bricks. Recently, the Glen Oaks women’s charity golf team raised $45,000 toward the house and agreed to furnish it.

20 people on waiting list

The young adults who will live in the new house have not yet been selected, but its construction is good news to families like Laura Keller’s. Keller, 23, lives at Baker House in Des Moines, the first facility Mainstream Living house built in Polk County.

Keller was born with Rett syndrome, a nervous system disorder that leads to developmental reversal. She needs care around the clock, has seizures and receives medication through a feeding tube. Keller uses a wheelchair, needs help bathing and dressing, is incontinent and does not speak.

She has lived in specialized facilities since she was 4 years old. Her parents, Brian and Susie Keller, wanted Laura nearby but in a place that allowed her to be as independent as possible while still having the medical care she requires.

Keller previously lived at ChildServe, a non-profit facility that provides special health-care needs for children and young adults from birth to age 21 who have developmental or physical conditions and disabilities.

As Keller approached age 21, her parents sought a new place for her to live.

“She needs to be bathed and dressed and fed, and I physically could not do that on my own any more, and our house is not accessible,” Susie Keller said.

40 will age out of ChildServe with no place to go

Amber Corrieri, director of development for Mainstream Living, said the group has 20 people on a waiting list. Another 40 people will age out of ChildServe in the next five years and need a place to live.

“They have very limited options after that,” Corrieri said. “They could either go to a state institution … or they could go to a nursing home, which when you’re 22 isn’t an appropriate place to be.”

In Iowa, there is a moratorium on the construction of any additional intermediate care facilities for people with special health-care needs. Openings usually only occur when someone dies.

Mainstream Living built its first group home in 2006 in Ames. Five young adults live in the home. Baker House opened in Des Moines in late 2010.

“It’s a real home,” Corrieri said. “When you walk into them, you feel like you’re home.”

Families can decorate their loved one’s bedroom. Each resident has his or her own private bath. The homes have living rooms and kitchens. They don’t look like a hospital or a nursing home.

The Kellers visited the home in Ames and thought it would work for their daughter. The Des Moines home is close enough to the Kellers’ residence in Urbandale that they can see Laura several times a week if not every day.

Eventually, Mainstream Living wants to build 15 of the homes, one for every Des Moines suburb.