Heart Havens, Inc.

For close to 20 years, Heart Havens, Inc. has been a provider of supports to adults with intellectual disabilities throughout Virginia. We are dedicated to empowering individuals to live and thrive in the communities they live in and make strong community connections, experience their lives to their full potential and develop a strong sense of well-being. Heart Havens, Inc. supports strong community connections through actively supporting each individual with their choices of activities to participate in within the community. These activities include: county programs, academic enrichment, arts, recreation, exercise groups, volunteering, church, concerts, etc. Regular involvement in these activities support a person becoming a respected participant of the group and more connected to their community.
Our housing options provide safe and nurturing places for people to develop social and life skills as a part of everyday learning. We support people to maintain and re-establish strong family bonds. With a strong volunteer base of caring adults and youth, we help people make new connections and friends.
The need is also evolving. Over recent years, our programs now serve a greater percentage of people who have significant medical and behavioral support needs that require more intensive support systems. As this need continues to grow, government funding has not kept up and, in many areas, declined. For future growth and sustainability, we are engaging in strategic partnerships and focusing on new partnerships for fund development.
As we have listened to the people we support and their families, we have learned that we need to offer new types of housing options. We are exploring and beginning our journey to offering apartments, providing in-home supports, and sponsored placement support. Through increasing the number of ways that we provide services we can reach and impact a broader scope of people with varying needs and levels of support. In all support services our goal will remain the ability to offer a more fully integrated community and more independence to the people in our services.
With the Medicaid Waiver Reform much has changed. In the first part of 2017 we plan to work with a facilitator to address these changes, current challenges and future directions.

The support we receive from community partners and private donors allows us to maintain our services. As we look to the future in an environment where resources are stretched to serve more people with more diverse and complex needs, we will continue to focus our efforts on the development of corporate and other philanthropic partnerships. We will continue to enhance and expand our partnerships with other providers as we share similar goals and combine resources for the best service delivery outcomes. These partnerships will help us sustain and support the ever-growing and changing needs of people with disabilities, utilizing additional models that supports best practices. Most importantly, it will empower people with disabilities and their families and provide a more inclusive and supportive community where people of all abilities can succeed and thrive.
To continue improving the quality of our programs, we have established and begun executing a plan that will address the new training needs . This plan also includes the transition from one crisis intervention training method to another method that has additional add-in modules to deepen the learning. We utilize technology in a number of ways to enhance our services including Therap, an electronic system of records management that, enables our organization to have real-time oversight for all program operations and an integrated HRIS that carries information on an employee starting at the point of application through their employment and separation from employment including COBRA.
In 2016 we developed and uploaded information into a grant management database to track and manage our fundraising activities.

Heart Havens, Inc. is well positioned to attain our key performance goals and long-term strategic plan initiatives. Through the collective efforts of our Board of Directors, administrative team, and program employees, there is an ongoing focus on quality improvement, strategic planning and performance across all programs and administrative departments. In 2016 we conducted an engagement survey for employees and designed a plan around the outcomes. As we go through the process of developing a new strategic plan, resources and directions, as well as potential partnerships and collaborative activities will be identified that will strengthen initiatives.

Heart Havens, Inc. has accomplished the following in 2017: (1) Provided a consistently high quality of services; (2) Supported by a diverse, well-managed, committed and professional Board of Directors; (3) Employ quality professional employees at all levels; a career ladder for employees is nearing the completion of the 3 year cycle; (4) a new HRIS system has been implemented allowing us to better manage the workforce throughout the employment cycle; (5) Expand our visibility in Virginia- through various initiatives our staff and media have become more visible- more groups have become engaged in volunteer activities and we routinely communicate internal activities and relevant information through social media; (6) created and uploaded information into a grant management database; and (7) established a partnership with local colleges to create intern offerings.

Initiatives that remain to be completed include: create a salary survey for program employees; continue to study the impact of recent legislative changes and develop plans for implementation that best meet the mission of the organization; continue to learn from organizations in others states what other implications might be in line for our organization; develop a tool to inform Board of issues and appropriate contacts; train & educate board members on current issues; evaluate benefits of Smart technology in our programs and implement as appropriate; explore and develop alternative sources of funding; and develop a Public Relations plan.