The other social safety net

(10/2023) Once upon a time the first person was identified as different. Maybe it was autism, maybe it was some other behavior that was unaccepted, maybe it was rooted in a neurological idiosyncrasy yet to be understood.

For centuries as humans struggled to survive, many people were left behind or otherwise shunned. For the most part, our society today tries to include everyone in the quest for a long and better life. We have made great leaps in medical knowledge, food production, housing and the economic means of distribution to get these things to as many people as possible. But with all of our modern innovation people still get left behind. Many people can relate to having a family member or friend who first falls through the cracks of our economic system and then our social safety net.

My husband and I raised a child with "unspecified learning delays", a child who, until recently—in relation to human history—would have been hidden, out of the sight of genteel society. A few years before the pandemic we joined with two other families in Frederick County to form a non profit organization, Kitsune, Inc, to address the need for solutions for independent living for adults with developmental disabilities, but without intellectual disabilities. In short, the people who do not get services when they age out of the public school system. In Maryland a person with a measurable IQ of over 69 is ineligible for many long term support services after aging out of the public school system and/or reaching the age of majority. These are the young adults who "fall off the cliff" of support after high school.

As we three households raised our children we came to understand that they would have difficulty maintaining a safe home of their own. We brainstormed ideas on how to recreate the back up that we provided to our kids, what we envisioned they would need to live independently. We kept coming up against the same speed bump. Our social safety net provides several pieces of support, but there is nothing that fills the gaps between services. The gaps that we fill for our family and friends when we take a call in the middle of the night— a car breaks down, help is needed to interpret everyday things such as bus schedules, or other small but confusing details of life.

I don’t know if society is required to fills gaps for everyone. I do know that where there is a problem there are solutions. The developmental disability likely most discussed in our day is autism. Over decades of knowing people with autism or caregivers for a person with autism, I have developed my own perspective on the growing definition of the "spectrum". I see it as part of the fabric of humanity. As such we the founders of Kitsune viewed our mission as how to recreate, or expand on the back up that we provided our kids.

Kitsune is a 501c3 educational non profit. We are focused on two projects, independent living and a database of resources for caregivers and people in need.

The residential project: A location where small group of individuals would live in their own apartments, with their back up person living on site, in their own apartment. This is envisioned to be a group of twelve two bedroom apartments in the same building. Ten would be for independent living, one would be for the director as part of a professional salary, and one would be for community gatherings, workshops, whatever was needed. The component that most differentiates the Kitsune model from others, is the on site director to support independence. Having a supervisor to check on residents on a schedule was not useful for our kids. Life does not happen on a schedule that we can each fit into. The back up needed is for that call for help that comes once a month or once a year. When it comes it is mission critical.

The idea has changed over the these past few years. We have learned from several similar projects popping up around the country. Parents like us had been working on various independent living situations for their children. Two examples are, Home of Our Own (homeofourown.org), in Wisconsin, and Main Street (livingatmainstreet.com), in Rockville, Maryland.

The social safety net of our great country, the United States of American, from local to federal resources, has limits that we elect representatives to organize and declare on our behalf. Each of us knows how hard it can be to get follow through from a government agency when we have a need. But as citizens we each have a super power, the nonprofit sector. Anyone can create a non profit organization to fill a need, to more fully realize our social safety net. It takes planning, and several steps to complete, but it is available to each of us.

So that is what we did in creating Kitsune, Inc. Creative solutions for independent living. The model we started with is an agile one that can be applied to many types of need. We are expanding the method of implementing the idea of a director within a small group of neighbors. There are several ways 11 or 12 apartments can be connected in one location, and we are looking for input from the community—what do you think is needed for independent living?

We will be at the Woodsboro Music Festival on Sunday October 22, at the Woodsboro Park. You will have the opportunity to meet some of the Kitsune members, and tell us what is important to you.