New Group Home

The average time a child spends on Heartspring’s school waitlist is 141 days. That’s 141 days for families to wait in crisis mode.

Heartspring’s residential program is the last hope for many families of children with special needs. Parents and guardians who come to us have exhausted the resources near their homes and are looking for a place that can keep their children safe while helping them grow and build independence.

We designed this home to specifically meet the challenging physical demands our children place on it. We’ve focused on durability, design and efficiency, taking what we’ve learned works and what doesn’t work in our current homes and incorporating it into the plans for the new group home.

G10 opened in January 2018.

Pediatric Services / Autism Services Addition

Imagine being told your child was different, and he or she would need special interventions and treatments. Imagine you were told the sooner you were able to get these services the better. After all of this, imagine you found a place that sounded perfect for your child. Then, imagine you learn that it may be months if not years before your child can actually attend.

Many of the families seeking help from Heartspring’s Pediatric Services or Autism Services programs waited up to two years to be seen by a therapist. We expanded and remodeled our facility to help address the ever-growing need for the therapies and interventions we provide for children.

The Pediatric Services and Autism Services project was completed in November 2017.

Cafeteria Expansion and Remodel

Since 1998, when the Heartspring campus was first constructed, we’ve doubled the number of students we serve and increased the meal preparations from one meal a day to three meals a day going from 320 meals served a week to over 1,300 without adding any square footage to accommodate for growth.

Mealtime for our students is more than getting the food to fuel them through the day, it’s also a valuable learning experience. The students acquire extremely important social and life skills like how to properly feed themselves, use utensils or ask food service employees for what they want.

The new cafeteria provides a space for valuable learning opportunities and solves many of our safety concerns. The old cafeteria was cramped, making it difficult for staff to consistently have easy access to our students in case of a behavior. Because safety is our top priority, the new cafeteria provides a open floor plan with better lines of sight. We updated the space with sensory-friendly paint and noise-dampening materials. The kitchen was remodeled to create a streamlined food services area and additional food storage.

The new cafeteria and kitchen were opened in October 2017.

Group Home Remodel

For our students, Heartspring is much more than just a school, it is a home for nearly sixty children. This is where they eat, sleep, relax, learn and grow. Our campus has seen birthday parties, holidays, triumphs and many memories.

In order to provide an updated, home-like environment in our on campus group homes, we replaced the particleboard cabinets in the kitchens with durable solid-wood cabinets and remodeled the bathrooms. We also added new lighting, sound-dampening materials, and sensory-friendly colors to support our students with autism.

The group home remodels were completed at the end of 2017.

New Competitive Integrated Employment / Music Building

The number of students served in our school has more than doubled while the number of classrooms available to students has not. To meet the needs of children with special needs and their families, Heartspring needs more space. Currently, we have nine classrooms available to our students. With the addition of our tenth group home, we need additional classrooms. We have moved our Competitive Integrated Employment (CIE) program to a temporary space to open a new classroom for the 2017/18 school year. While we need more classroom space, both the CIE and Music programs are invaluable to our students’ enrichment and preparation for life after Heartspring. Children build vocational skills through classroom work, school-based internships and community-based internships. Our music program provides an outlet for our students to express themselves and learn in a new way.

To add the additional space we need and also keep these two programs running, we’ve added a second phase to our building project — the construction of a CIE/music addition. We will construct a more than 5,000 sq. ft. building to address the specific needs of both programs. The programs will define the space instead of the space defining them. In CIE, this will enable us to create an environment that closely models the work conditions the students will see later in life setting them up for a path to greater independence. This addition will allow us to keep up with the need for and quality of our services and plan for our future.