National AccessAbility Week honouring Canadians living with disabilties

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman For the Lethbridge Herald on June 1, 2021.

This week is National AccessAbility and Lethbridge Family Services’ DaCapo Disability Services is acknowledging it.
National AccessAbility Week is an opportunity to celebrate the valuable contributions made by Canadians living with disabilities in our community.
To recognize inclusion in the workplace, and the ability to offer a barrier-free environment to those living with a disability.
“In the disability services sector, our focus is on individual abilities, only concentrate on individual strengths and gifts and utilizing these attributes to increase skills and independence for the individuals we support. So, my steps with the use of the word ‘AccessAbility’ is to place emphasis on the fact that access provides individuals with the ability to fully participate in the community,” explained Dianne Kotkas, Director, DaCapo Disability Services Department, Lethbridge Family Services.
LFS DaCapo Disability Services provides a continuum of services for individuals with intellectual disabilities. This continuum includes residential, respite, employment and community access services.
Community access services assist individuals to develop skills and relationships that enhance well-being, independence and connectivity to the community.
Their focus is to provide activities for individuals to participate in recreational activities, offer support to enhance and/or maintain physical and cognitive abilities, as well as to develop skills, facilitate voluntarism and work placement pursuits.
Community access services are provided in a fully accessible facility, as well as community settings.
In addition, DaCapo Disability Services provides specialized services in three different areas, pediatric and adult assessment and diagnostic services, community access for people in continuing care and cross disability support services.
Cross disability support services connect individuals with complex needs and invisible disabilities to existing community resources.
Individuals accessing services at the facility utilize a newly renovated kitchen in a number of ways. During their lunch and coffee breaks, the kitchen is fully functional and accessible for individuals that are in wheelchairs or have mobility challenges, which allows individuals to enhance their cooking and baking skills.
Individuals also use produce that’s generated in the LFS garden to create specific dishes and a portion of the produce that they generate in the garden is donated to local food banks.
“Some individuals may have annual goals of learning about nutrition or learning how to prepare meals, so they can utilize the kitchen with staff support. We’ve had actually cooking classes before, where a group of individuals are learning how to produce, follow menus, and produce dishes,” said Kotkas.
According to Statistics Canada, 22 per cent of the Canadian population above the age of 15 – about 6.2 million individuals – have one or more disabilities.
The November 2018 Canadian Survey on Disability Report goes on to say that approximately one in four Canadians aged 15 and older (or 7.8 million people) provided care to a family member or friend with a long-term health condition, a physical or mental disability, or problems related to aging.
The LFS DaCapo Disability Services facility is retrofitted with a ceiling walking track that provides non-ambulatory individuals opportunities to walk. The ceiling track utilizes lifts and slings to assist individuals to get out of their wheelchairs. Then with the support of a sling, they are able to actually walk through the facilities.
The walking track provides an opportunity for individuals to get out of their chairs. It helps with reducing pressure sores, as well as with weight bearing activities to prevent muscle atrophy while also assisting individuals with a little bit of cardio activity.
DaCapo Disability Services has been able to continue to operate throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
But with the current physical distancing requirements, the number of individuals they can support in their facility has been reduced.
“We don’t have the number of individuals accessing the facility right now that we had pre pandemic, but what we have done, therefore, is some of the community access services that were provided in the facility for some individuals are now provided in residential homes and family homes, so they are still getting services just in a different environment,” added Kotkas.