Supportive Living Arrangements (SLA) Services

Empowering the intellectually disabled to reach their full potential...

About the Program

We offer a comprehensive range of habilitation services for individuals diagnosed with mental disabilities. American Home Companion, Inc.'s habilitation services provide patients with a mixture of community based experiences to develop pre-vocational, socialization, and communication skills.

The primary focus of our habilitation services is to empower our clients to be more independent within their community through skill development. Our services enable clients to become more independent by supporting and assisting them with problem solving and decision making. Our Qualified Intellectual Disability Professionals (QIDP's) and Personal Trainers work hard every day in assisting our clients to meet or exceed the goals established in their habilitation plans.

Our training and habilitation services include, but are not limited to, instruction and assistance in the following areas:

 

      • Household Management
      • Money Management
      • Mobility Training
      • Relationships
      • Self-Advocacy
      • Personal Care
      • Meal Preparation
      • Social Skills
      • Emergency Response
      • Health/Safety
      • Housing Search
      • Resource Development
      • Community Access
      • Recreation/Leisure
      • Interpersonal Skills
      • Medical Monitoring
      • Choices/Decision making
      • Advocacy
      • Comprehensive Functional Assessment/Individual Service Plan Development
      • Support Network Development

 

We work closely with the State of Nevada's Aging and Disability's Rural Regional and Sierra Regional Centers to provide services and reach out to state benefit recipients. Click here for eligibility and more information about this program. Ultimately, the program aims to teach personalized independence and socialization skills while maintaining appropriateness in all life activities.


 

Our Approach

Our staff works with clients to develop useful and valuable skills that encourage independence and a sense of self-worth. The necessary steps needed to develop these skills are incorporated into a plan developed jointly by the client, his/her family members, AHC's staff, and collaterals such as therapists and educators. The plan takes into consideration several main factors:

 

Positive Behavior Support and Intervention

Positive behavior support is an approach to addressing challenging behaviors that focuses on changing the physical and interpersonal environment and a person's skill deficits so that he/she is able to get his/her needs met without having to resort to challenging behaviors. American Home Companion, Inc. believes that positive behavior support is based on respect, dignity, and personal choice. This support helps develop effective ways of meeting a client's needs to reduce challenging behaviors. We also believe in implementing the least restrictive form of intervention while working with our clients to develop productive and positive means of expression and alternatives to negative behaviors.

 American Home Companion, Inc. completes a Comprehensive Functional Assessment (CFA) during a potential client's initial visit that provides the basis for developing a Positive Behavior Support Plan (PBSP), which will help to eliminate or reduce the frequency and severity of the challenging behavior. Different people will require different positive supports, but our Agency mainly focuses on the following common types of support:

 

  • Learning how to make choices and exercise personal power.
  • Managing daily activities, pursuing personal goals, and learning to make decisions with positive outcomes in mind.
  • Forming and maintaining significant friendships and relationships.
  • Participating in a broad range of activities that the person enjoys and which promote positive recognition by self and others. This includes work, leisure, socialization, and personal interests.

 

Environment

A supportive environment helps out clients meet his/her needs through positive expression, instead of resorting to challenging behaviors to get the environment to respond. In a supportive environment, our Personal Instructors proactively plan to meet a person's needs through:

 

  • Promoting warm and caring relationships, especially with caregivers.
  • Increasing a person's opportunity to make daily choices.
  • Reducing factors and forms of treatment that may make a person feel anxious, afraid, angry, or devalued.
  • Providing consistent, positive responses to appropriate behavior on the part of the person.
  • Providing a consistent, predictable environment.
  • Calmly interrupting and redirecting inappropriate behavior.
  • Assisting the person to understand, to the best of his/her ability, how and why behavior change is helpful.

 

Community Support

American Home Companion, Inc. has partnerships with many local organizations that have special participation and activities in a group type setting for the mentally challenged, such as Special Olympics, bowling leagues, track practice, and a variety of other events.

We constantly look for opportunities in the community and forward invitations to our clients from several local organizations such as Northern Nevada for Independent Living to activities aimed at promoting diversity. There are also many individual activities in the community where the handicapped are welcomed and encouraged to participate.  American Home Companion, Inc. actively contacts and encourages all organizations involved to help the agency participate with clients.


 

Integration

American Home Companion approaches integration as an opportunity for our clients to live in the community and be valued for their own uniqueness and abilities. Our Agency promotes community integration through services, programs, and activities that facilitate and enable individuals with disabilities to interact with nondisabled persons to the fullest extent possible.  Our staff guide clients through instruction, role modeling, social first-hand accounts, and real-time experiences aimed at developing, understanding, and working towards their long term and short term goals. We believe this approach allows for our clients to have an equal opportunity to benefit from the programs, services, and activities that are based on specific community awareness and interaction.

 

Our Staff

American Home Companion, Inc. implements a wide range of rigorous supervision, guidance, training, and field visits by Qualified Intellectual Disability Professionals (QIDP's) during regular visits to client's homes and community activities in order to assess the effectiveness of our Personal Instructors. Our staff is always kind and professional. New applicants are thoroughly screened and undergo rigorous State and Federal background checks to ensure we are only hiring responsible, trustworthy personnel.

Personal instructors are trained to perform a wide variety of routine tasks and activities in support of the full range of facilitative services provided to consumers. The tasks and activities performed depend upon the specific abilities of the individuals being served and the nature of the setting where the work is performed. These tasks involve encouraging, guiding and training individuals in developing daily living skills and habits, taking care of their personal needs, assuring community integration, ensuring the health and safety of individuals, and maintaining the service environment. All personal instructors are well versed and trained in performing the tasks listed above and receive performance evaluations throughout their employment with American Home Companion, Inc.