Easter Seals evolves to help children, adults in state overcome disabilities
Easter Seals Oklahoma Inc. is a statewide nonprofit committed to enhancing the quality of life for children and adults with disabilities so they may live with equality, dignity and independence.
In a recent interview, Development Director Lauri Monetti spoke about how Easter Seals Oklahoma is serving disabled individuals and giving them the confidence to be who they want to be.
Q: How did Easter Seals Oklahoma form?
A: We were founded in 1925 as the Oklahoma Society for Crippled Children Inc. We started out serving children who had disabilities like cerebral palsy and other disabilities more prominent back then. The Oklahoma Easter Seals Agency became incorporated in 1984 and a few years later changed the name to Oklahoma Easter Seals Society. In 2002, the Oklahoma Society for Crippled Children merged with Oklahoma Easter Seals Society, and we became known as Easter Seals Oklahoma Inc.
We changed names and adjusted throughout our more than 90-year history. In 2000, we opened up an adult day center, expanding our services to adults.
Now we serve people of all ages and disabilities, not just children or any particular type of disability.
Q: Where and how many people do you serve?
A: We cover the state and this last year served people in 15 different counties. Some of that is through financial assistance, some of it is assistance in the school system, and some is for our school and therapy we provide.
We break our numbers down depending on the service we provide. We don’t serve a huge number of people, but whom we serve is important. We have our Early Learning and Inclusion Academy, and last year we served 96 children and families. We screened 29 children this last year for autism, and we did 145
speech and occupational therapy screenings.
In our adult day center, we served 61 different adults and their families. Then we often do trainings for teachers and parents. We trained 20 different teachers and parents in applied behavior analysis, which is a therapy used to help children with autism. Then we also do some financial assistance and served 44 children and adults through that.
Q: What makes your services unique?
A: We’re a little bit different than a lot of places because we have a school and adult day center in one location, meaning we do a lot of intergenerational activities. Adults will come over for different events on the children’s side, and then the children will come over to the adult side for activities. For example, earlier this year we did a talent show and the kids did their talent portion for the adult day and then the adults did the same for the kids. We do different activities like that throughout the year and every week.
For the younger adults, it creates a big brother, big sister relationship, and for the older adults, it’s like a grandparent relationship. It’s good for the kids and it’s good for the adults, because it really brings a lot of joy to their day.
Q: What are some recent successes you’ve had?
A: As far as what we have done here, I think we look at the small wins for each child or each adult individually. There is a gentleman who didn’t really participate in activities and was very quiet. However, with the introduction of music, he started singing along, and it really changed his personality. Those little everyday moments and seeing a child
progress in their therapy are wins for us. We hope we are making an impact on these children and adults to make them successful for the rest of their lives. We also hope we are helping families not be so stressed out and get some relief.
Q: What are your greatest needs?
A: The big one is monetary support. A general donation would help, but what we’re really seeking is monthly donors. We’d like to have people think of us when they are thinking of a charity to give to. Those small incremental monthly donations of $5 or $10 a month would tremendously help us.
We’re always struggling financially even though we charge tuition. I don’t know if donors would get behind sponsoring a classroom or sponsoring a semester or even trying to raise money for supplemental scholarships. Each child may be paying a different amount, because we serve a lot of children who are in Department of Human Services custody. That’s kind of a challenge of ours — these children need us, and we don’t want to say no, we can’t, because it cost them too much money. We’re not going to turn someone away, because those are the people
who need us the most.
We are always welcoming of volunteers, especially in our adult day center. Little individual needs we have are the need of a new salon chair that leans back. We have a place where our adults can get their hair washed and trimmed once a week, but our salon chair doesn’t lean back. We could also use some new playground equipment for the children. We would just like some things replaced with newer items. It’s not falling apart, but we have some pieces that could be updated or changed. We’ve had someone out to look at it, and it’s very costly. We’d also like to have some turf out there so we don’t have to worry about maintaining the grass where the kids could get real messy.
Q: Why is Easter Seals Oklahoma important?
A: I think our school is very important, beyond those with a disability. For example, my daughter and son, who just went to kindergarten here, don’t see the disability. They just see the kid. I think having an integrated environment all day long shows how each child has so much more in common than they have different. I think that’s what we bring and why we are important — to hopefully change that understanding.
Everyone should have a positive experience in life and be able to feel like they can be successful. Just because you have a disability doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have that opportunity as well. We want people’s understanding and vision of disability to be expanded to not just see a person for their disability but to also see them as a person. We hope what we can do for the community is help those children and adults who have a disability be able to do things they never thought they could do.