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Six nonprofits have combined their efforts to develop a comprehensive survey to amplify the voices of individuals who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The nonprofit partners involved in the survey include Morgan’s Multi-Assistance Center, The Arc of San Antonio, Brighton Center, SA Life Academy, Respite Care of San Antonio, and Any Baby Can.
Jenny Hixon, CEO of Any Baby Can, met with the other organizations to discuss opportunities to work together to provide better service to San Antonio residents.
“In looking around at previous assessments that have been done of our community, we realized there really hadn't been a comprehensive survey done of San Antonio specifically,” Hixon said. ”There's some state data, there's some national data, but there's not anything from Bexar County that looks at what parents in Bexar County say they need for their family members.”
Hixon said the nonprofits took it upon themselves to create and conduct a comprehensive survey.
“It was all a bunch of other nonprofits that also serve people with special health care needs and IDD [intellectual and/or developmental disability] and asked, 'what do you want to know about your own work? What are the questions that you have? What are the things that you think we need to be asking parents who are the people that you think have the right information and based on their recommendations?' " she explained. “So really, the survey questions — the people that we're trying to reach out to — are all based on our work with this broader coalition of folks who also do this work.”
Hixon said the survey’s purpose is to examine what’s working well. “So if you look at the survey, a lot of the questions are like, 'who is the person that we should be lifting up? Who is an expert that's really helped your family? What is a program that's working well?' ”
Hixon explained the survey will touch on questions that haven’t been asked in the past.
“So we have some real specific things about 'where does your loved one live? What percentage of folks that have adult children living at home versus living in community? For our community, does your loved one attend a day [habilitation facility] program?' And then for our younger families, 'has anyone talked to you about services when your child ages out and becomes an adult? Do you have any of those documents in place?' ”
The survey responses will give participating nonprofits an idea of where to focus resources, improve advocacy and programs, and push for policy changes that better serve families.
“We know that the people that are living with these issues every day are the ones that are actually the experts on these issues, and so that's why we really wanted to gather their wisdom and knowledge and then bring it back to the same group of people that provide the services,” Hixon added.
The group of nonprofits will reconvene in April to interpret the data from the survey and bring it back to the community.
The survey, launched in February, has been translated into Spanish. It closes at the end of March.
