The health, well-being, and safety of ADEC staff and clients is our top priority. Please know that ADEC’s mission – our staff – are recognized as essential personnel, essential services.
I would like to thank Indiana Governor Holcomb for specifically mentioning Hoosiers with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the FAQ that adjoined his March 23rd executive order to stay at home. I appreciate his acknowledgement of human services operations. Our work of in-home direct care to many of our clients is an essential duty and a matter of life and death.
ADEC could never navigate this pandemic without our dedicated staff. #TeamADEC works 24 hours a day, seven days a week because we believe in our mission.
Our staff creates the positive, nurturing environment that allows our clients to thrive personally and help them live lives full of choice and possibility, to be safe, help ensure their health and meet their needs.
Our operational staff is providing the safest working conditions possible with the coronavirus situation. We have personal protection equipment, such as masks, gloves and disinfectant. We are also purchasing more personal protection equipment. We have full-time nurses on staff and other trained medical professionals on staff. We have dedicated administrative staff such as HR, finance and I/T that are working to keep the agency functional.
Even as we have unfortunately had to suspend many of our services, we have given all of our valued employees an opportunity to work in residential living or other areas where they can continue to directly care for our clients or otherwise support ADEC.
We have also taken actions to help our staff during this time. We pulled ahead paid personal time off blocks, eased requirements for when staff is ill, are allowing flexing and staggering work hours, and ADEC is paying the full health, dental and vision insurance premiums of all eligible employees for the next six weeks.
ADEC is not in this alone. I am in continued communication with CEOs of my peer institutions from around the state – many of whom look to ADEC as leaders both in providing exceptional care of clients with IDDs and also in terms of maintaining a professional organization. We are strongly advocating at the federal and state levels to ask for help to non-profits, especially those like ADEC.
To all of #TeamADEC, I thank you with my whole heart for your dedicated work with our clients. As you have heard me before say, you are the heartbeat of ADEC.
We must constantly readjust our course of action in this uniquely uncertain time for our local community, state, nation and even the planet as a whole. It is because of you that I know ADEC and its clients are as well-positioned as any agency could be amidst these uncertain, challenging and ever-evolving circumstances.
Be safe. Be well. Thank you for all that you do to make this possible,
