For Erin Malloy, the challenge of serving developmentally disabled adults is compounded by the public misunderstanding of such disabilities.
“Our goal is to maximize the potential of each of our clients,” said Malloy, director of development at Opengate Inc. in Somers. “Some move on from residential housing to group homes. They have jobs. They volunteer at Goodwill. They are good neighbors.”
It isn”™t easy. Some of Opengate”™s 100 clients had been abused in institutions. Others are medically fragile. Many are consigned to a kind of poignant childhood that the rest of us have long since passed by.
Yet Opengate itself continues to grow: Next month it will launch the Geraldo Rivera Residence, named for the muckraking TV journalist whose 1972 exposé on the horrors of the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island was a turning point in the treatment of the mentally challenged. The Rivera Residence will be Opengate”™s fifth group home in Westchester County. The organization also offers residential housing at its Somers complex for less functioning adults as well as “day habilitation” programs, a kind of day care, at a rental space off campus.
These services are provided by a trained staff of 200 working with an annual operating budget of $12.9 million that comes from New York state”™s Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.
Still, Malloy said, Opengate can”™t use operational funds for expanded programs or capital improvements such as the nursing facility for medically fragile clients, a $1 million renovation project that will be completed next year. For these, Opengate relies on fundraising.
“The families of our residents play an enormous part here,” she said.
Nonetheless, Malloy wants to raise the organization”™s profile, not merely as a fund-raising tool but as a way of letting the public know how much Opengate contributes to the local economy. Residents and staffers alike, for instance, shop in area stores.
The real value of Opengate, of course, can”™t be measured in dollars and cents.
“We do need to get the word out that we provide a necessary service for a vulnerable community,” she said.
