In 1971 the Utah Association of Rehabilitation Facilities was developed to assist Rehab Providers in organizing around the issues that faced Community Rehab organizations. In 1983 the Community Residential Providers Association was formed to assist primarily residential business in addressing their needs. In the late 80's the two provider organizations came together and formed our current member organization, the Utah Association of Community Services.

Today, we are a 501(c) (6), membership organization with a primary objective to make optimal safe services available that improve and enhance the quality of lives of people with disabilities. Christene Jones is our full time Executive Director and Steve Mascaro is our Utah Works Director. We are 40 individual small and large businesses that contract with the Division of Services for People with Disabilities to provide community supports to over 5,000 people in 400 program sites across the State. We collectively, employ approximately 4,500 staff to provide these services.

The Department of Human Services, Division of Services for People with Disabilities has a budget of just less than 2 million dollar and our members annually represent approximately 95 million or 83% of that budget. Many of our member organizations also contract with other Divisions within Human Services, such as Juvenile Justices and Family & Children Services. A number of us contract with other state agencies, Division of Rehab and Workforce Development, and also hold contracts with cities and counties. Many of our members also provide services in other states such as Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona, just to name a few.

As you can see we bring thirty five years wealth of expertise, knowledge and experience to our partnership with Human Services.

Two of UACS more recent accomplishments are the development of a restraint & behavior training program, Supports, Options, Action and Respect known as SOAR and a legislative bill that changed the State Use law.

SOAR was the brain child of a number of providers that envisioned a better behavior training program for our staff that truly addressed the needs of people with disabilities and their behaviors. In the passed two years alone we have trained well over one hundred member's staff in SOAR. We are very proud of our training.

The State Use law was another obstacle that we recognized and took the initiative to change. This was a tremendous investment of time, money, and resources of our members, but we were successful in changing the law to make it effective. In this first year we have been successfully in securing ten set-a- side contracts helping to employ fifty 50 people with disabilities in our state!

We are a very proactive group that wants better services and lives for the people we support. Join us in celebrating our thirty fifth year as an Association!

Author: Phil Shumway, UACS Past President and Executive Director of TURN Community Services