The Arc of Greater Boone County

A note from Andy Kirby, Executive Director,

A few weeks ago, I announced to our board of directors, staff, and participants that I would be leaving The Arc of Greater Boone County to go to The Arc of Indiana and serve as its Associate Executive Director and Executive Director of its Foundation. Leaving an organization like The Arc GBC was an extremely difficult decision to make. The culture, tradition, and history of excellence created an environment that allowed my leadership style and professional strengths to shine. Combined with a tremendous workforce and focused participants, we were able to build on past accomplishments and create an organization that is poised and ready to move forward as the provider of choice for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the greater Boone County area and beyond.

At The Arc of Indiana, I will have new and exciting opportunities to impact the individuals we serve across the state. The Arc of Indiana is a statewide association of member organizations that work as a collective network to advocate for and provide quality supports to individuals with disabilities. I am particularly excited about my opportunity to lead The Arc of Indiana’s Foundation, which operates a fully functional Marriott hotel. Within the hotel is the Erskine Green Training Institute which provides residential training opportunities for individuals with disabilities and focuses on a wide range of vocational options for its students. Students benefit from a “college experience” as they live at the hotel during their training sessions. The employment outcomes have been extraordinary for people graduating these programs and the impact is being felt throughout the state. I am anxious to work with the staff of The Arc of Indiana and the Foundation to ensure that individuals with disabilities, who live in Indiana, have access to whatever they need to be as independent and self-sufficient as possible.

I will miss my extended Boone County family, but look forward to watching great things to come from my new perspective at The Arc of Indiana.

CARF International has given The Arc of Greater Boone County another accreditation for a period of three years for its services.  This is the sixth consecutive Three-Year Accreditation that the international accrediting body, CARF, has given to The Arc GBC.

This accreditation decision represents the highest level of accreditation that can be given to an organization and shows the organization’s substantial conformance to the CARF standards.

CARF is an independent, nonprofit accrediting body whose mission is to promote the quality, value, and optimal outcomes of services through a consultative accreditation process and continuous improvement services that center on enhancing the lives of the persons served. For more info about the accreditation process, please visit the CARF website at www.carf.org.

As we grow and expand our services we have to hire additional staff to meet the need. The Arc of Greater Boone County works hard to ensure that we do not have unnecessary waitlists for services. Most of our programs at The Arc do not have a waitlist at all. We currently have four job positions open. Our goal is to hire staff that have adequate experience and the right attitude to carry out our mission. Check out our openings at this link > Employment 

2017

A new year is finally here! We want to thank all of our supporters for your support this past year.

With your help we were able to improve many things in 2016:

• We hired additional participants in the Mainstreet Enterprises workshop
• PCS increased its average daily attendance
• 85% of students with disabilities existing the school system in Boone County were referred to Vocational Rehab for employment support
• 640 women, infants, and children were served on a monthly basis from our local WIC office an increase of 65 individuals from the previous year
• 90 hours per month were spent in the community volunteering by participants and their staff with our Community Membership program

Thursday, the 17th before Thanksgiving we held our annual awards banquet at the Boone County 4-H fairgrounds. This event gave us the opportunity to honor our participants and the achievements they have made throughout the year.

We were also able to recognize many other community partners:

• McDonald’s, Employer of the Year
• Sugar Creek Art Center, Community Partner
• Vocational Rehab, Community Partner
• Sheriff Mike Nielson, Community Partner of the Year

The participants we recognized for outstanding achievement:

• Eugene, Job Connection Participant of the Year
• Kim, Community Membership Participant of the Year
• Kyle, Transition Participant of the Year
• Jennifer, Literacy Participant of the Year
• Mark, Health Matters Participant of the Year
• Reggie, MSE Participant of the Year
• Henry, PCS Participant of the Year

Our annual report will be mailed out and posted online by the end of November. We look forward to sharing this last year at The Arc GBC with you.

We held our annual art show in Thorntown again this year. Our artisans worked hard to complete original pieces to showcase and sell at this event. Bella Helibrum, our art teacher, organized the collections to showcase and made sure our event ran without a hitch.

Art items for sale from our Artisans include:

• hand-dyed scarves
• paintings
• paper bowls
• clay saucers
• Christmas ornaments
• beaded necklaces
• canvas bags
• mailboxes