Paul Lemieux is Mainstay’s Family Liaison. This series explores different topics related to finding the right supportive housing for your loved one with disabilities. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
1. What is it like on move-in day?
It’s an exciting day for the individual. We typically see parents and siblings helping residents move in. In some cases, a moving service will be there to get larger pieces into the room. On top of all this, the other residents in the house are also excited about the prospect of having a new friend in the building. Overall, it’s a positive, exciting day for the person moving in.
2. How do residents make the rooms their own?
We encourage them to make the rooms their own, and to reflect their personalities. Part of our model is making the person comfortable as they move from their parents’ home into their new home. A lot of the time, we see their new room closely reflects what they had at home. And in other cases, residents are creating a new room since they are starting a whole new life, so to speak. We have very spacious rooms in the houses. Most times you’ll see a full bed, a dresser, a bookcase, a desk, and even a mini fridge. There are others who will do more. Everything is geared towards creating the most comfortable environment for them.
3. Aside from furniture, what are some other things that are important for residents to bring from home?
I’ve always likened this to moving someone in your family to college. What really helps is to identify some things that are perhaps less obvious, and we’ve developed a checklist to help with this. There are things on that list like bed linens, towels and hangers. Residents need to bring things to do their own laundry. One unique aspect is that residents don’t have to bring cleaning products for any of the common areas. The landlord provides a cleaning service that takes care of places like the bathrooms, kitchen and living rooms. Residents are responsible for preparing their own breakfast and lunch. On the checklist, you’ll see some gadgets that residents use at home to prepare those meals. In one house, someone brought their own air-fryer.
4. How often should a parent consider visiting their child?
This is a collaborative model and it’s successful because of the work between residents, families, our services and outside agencies. Parents should come as often as they would like to visit, and as often as their loved ones likes. Because you’re now visiting your loved one at their new home, we encourage families to let their child know they’re coming. Families are provided with the key code to the front door so that they can come and go as they please. Every bedroom has its own keycode as well, so it is up each resident how they share that. We encourage families to be as active and involved as when their child lived at home. We all want them to be comfortable in their new environment. When we see this kind of interaction with families coming in to see their loved one, and the loved one also going home for visits, we know the model is working well – that’s the objective we are striving for.
If you would like more information about Mainstay, email us at contact@mainstayliving.org.
