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Todd – At Home in the Community
When Todd Fritz was born in 1963 his mother Elizabeth was told her newborn, diagnosed with Down Syndrome, wouldn’t live past the age of 2. Todd is 46 now and relishes his shiny red walker, which he pushes with cheerful abandon, despite the ill effects of having severe arthritis in one hip and three open-heart surgeries.
Todd says he loves working at Aspire Industries, the workshop in Hillside where he makes about $12 a week. Today he’s assembling a food tray for a frozen food maker. When he’s back at his community home in Westchester, where he lives with seven other housemates, Todd is likely to be found watching wrestling and hockey on TV, wearing his much-loved Army hat, or admiring his Michael Jordan poster on the wall of his bedroom. Todd gets around the house with the help of mobility accommodations, like grab bars and chairs in the bathroom and a ramp out in front of the house to accommodate the potential need of a wheelchair one day.
People with Down Syndrome age about 20 years faster than the rest of us, so Todd’s health problems are fairly typical, explains Marcy Nelson Hadley, Vice President of Adult Services at Aspire. In general, people with developmental disabilities are living longer than 20 years ago, probably because more doctors and caretakers are better trained to deal with the complications that come along with some conditions, says Hadley.
In suburban Cook County alone, there are 60,000 adults with developmental disabilities who are age 60 and older. The average age of residents living in Aspire’s community homes is 49, but by 2012 that number will be 55. Older adults with developmental disabilities are at risk for developing secondary health conditions because of their lifelong disability, and sometimes because of their primary diagnosis. Besides needing changes in their physical home and work environment, residents also experience cognitive declines, which means they need services to keep them active, involved and social so they can remain independent as long as possible, says Hadley.
Caring for older adults has become a key challenge for Aspire. Health and aging needs are increasing costs at a time when public funding from the state is declining. This is why a new initiative has been launched to fund the changing needs of its residents.
Aspire has retrofitted some of its 16 community homes, thanks to $141,500 from the Community Memorial Foundation and an anonymous foundation, but all of the homes need further improvements to make them more accessible.
Aspire has hired a health services administrator to help coordinate the wide range of health care needs for its aging residents. “We have more than 100 people in our group homes and many have several doctors and specialists they see and require follow up care, so we wanted to take the burden off of our non-trained medical staff and have an administrator to help our nurses oversee those needs,” says Hadley.
Aspire has specialized later life day services to meet the needs of aging residents who are no longer able to participate in developmental training programs. Aspire is one of the few providers to have an Alzheimer’s self-contained unit. It’s in place at Aspire on Eastern, a group home of 82 adults that is accessible to people with disabilities.
Since Alzheimer’s can often be a complication of Down Syndrome later in life, Aspire would like to offer dementia care in smaller settings. The organization has a Senior Day Program where residents get to watch TV, kick back, and enjoy their golden years, much the way other seniors do, says Hadley.
Todd’s 84-year-old mother, Elizabeth Fritz, says that while she worries about her son living out his senior years, she is comforted by the fact that he has a younger brother, Lee, who can step in when she and her husband are no longer able to care for their firstborn. She’s happy that “Toddy” is living in a safe and accessible group home and doing well despite his health difficulties. “That gives me peace of mind,” she says.