A New Agency is Being Developed
How YOU Can Help

OCL is one of the few organizations that is totally dedicated to personalizing the services for each person who comes to be served. We began this journey in the early 90’s and it has continued over the years. OCL has had tremendous success in providing personalized supports vocationally, residentially, academically and socially. We have seen the people we support become more relaxed and satisfied with their lives, medications have decreased or disappeared, behavior problems have decreased dramatically, and those we support are now a part of neighborhoods of their choice and are known as just another person who lives on the street or works in an establishment. People today served through OCL are now living ordinary lives.

As we began our walk down this path of personalized services, we found that there were numbers of people asking for more normal lives away from traditional programming. As we began to support more and more people, we began to realize that we could not do this for everyone who walked through our doors. We realized that in order to provide quality, we needed to know each person, deeply understand what s/he needs and remain true their personal direction. If this was so, we could not do it for large numbers of people.

OCL has always conducted retreats that help all of us to think more deeply about our work. It was through one of these experiences that OCL decided to remain small and instead mentor a new group of staff that would become a new organization in the Syracuse community. This new organization would be dedicated in providing only personalized services and would be another option to those in the county.

When a person came to our attention that could not get the services in the manner that the family wanted, we decided then to approach our local administration office about the idea of developing a new organization. We would develop and provide the service if they would allow us to begin the development of a new organization with expertise in developing and providing personalized supports. Thus began the development of a new team of staff that will become the new agency, Connections of CNY, Inc.

Currently OCL is in the process of raising the necessary funds that will enable Connections to pay their needed bills as they await reimbursement from the state. Right now we cannot bill until after services are given. There is a lag between when the service is delivered and when payment is actually received so that Connections needs to self fund this gap for up to three months.

This new 501c3 organization – Connections of CNY, Inc. – is organizing and raising the start-up funds it needs to launch its services. To find out how you can support Connections and enrich the lives of developmentally disabled adults in Central New York, press the button below:

Campaign for Connections!

OCL is now hosting a fund raising drive that will capture the necessary funds that will enable Connections to be financially stable enough to spin off. For more information contact, Glenn Ivers at glenni@oclinc.org