Community Blessed by Adult Day Services Clients

One of my favorite activities as executive director is to visit our Adult Day Services (ADS) ministry. It only takes a few minutes surrounded by the laughter, the unconditional love and the gentle nature of those we serve to remember that Catholic Charities is a better organization not because we serve ADS clients, but because ADS clients and their families allow us to be a part of their lives.

Since 1975, Adult Day Services (ADS) has provided an affordable, quality day program, helping adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and seniors coping with Alzheimer, dementia or loneliness.

At its core, ADS allows families to care for one another as God meant us to do. That is a blessing for the families themselves and for our entire community. Program participants benefit from group and individual activities, socialization, care coordination, transportation and nutritious meals. They feel safe and secure while enjoying enriching activities with each other.

In my mind, the beauty of ADS is how we not only serve the program participants, we also serve their families. ADS helps family caregivers balance daily-life demands with the responsibility to care for their loved ones, allowing them to remain active in our community through employment, social activities and volunteerism. Family caregivers regularly tell me what a blessing this is.

ADS has been successful and growing for 45 years, and we anticipate the demand for services will continue to grow in the future. We have outgrown our current building on west Central, and now operate two buildings, which is inefficient for our staff and less than ideal for clients. We need more and better suited space to improve care for current and future clients.

These are two reasons why Bishop Kemme and our board of directors have approved our Blessing Families, Enriching Lives capital campaign for Adult Day Services and Catholic Charities. Generous lead donors and foundations have the campaign well on its way to meeting our $5.2 million goal, which will allow us to transform the former Michener Elementary School in north Wichita into a larger and more functional single campus for ADS.

One of those foundations is the Tulsa-based J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation which has pledged $750,000 to our capital campaign, with the stipulation that their dollars must be matched by new donors who give or pledge by March 31, 2020. In addition, one generous individual donor has pledged $850,000 as a capstone gift to push us over the top when we get close to our goal.

With your help, we will bring these Mabee dollars to Wichita to improve the lives of our program participants and their families for years to come.

In the coming weeks, you will receive a letter and campaign information from Catholic Charities. I would ask that you prayerfully consider a gift to our ADS capital campaign. Remember, thanks to the Mabee matching grant, any gift you make is essentially doubled in size, pushing us closer to the campaign’s goal.