LeadingAge New York Adviser Winter Vol. 1 | Page 22

(continued from page 20)

additional beds will bring us to a total of 169
beds. About 84 percent of our beds are occupied
by children in need of long term care on a long
term basis and the rest are more subacute and
the goal is to get them home.
We have the assisted feeding program. When
a child is medically complex, it can be very
overwhelming at first for a family. Teaching them
and helping them understand how their child can
thrive at home is something we are very proud of
and happy to do. A lot of families want to learn so
we do a lot of teaching with our families.
Also, every family that goes back to the
community is hooked up with support services,
from medical homecare to schooling and early
intervention if it’s appropriate for the child. We
really don’t discharge anybody if we don’t have
the services in place. That’s an important part
of the discharge planning process. We work with
the community depending on where the home
of the child is. We try to set up support services
in that area. If the child is from Brooklyn we will
try to find services in that area for them. Most of
our children come to us from the boroughs but
we also serve Long Island, Westchester, Putnam
and Rockland counties. We really serve any area
where there’s a need.
What challenges are unique to serving your
population?
One of the biggest challenges that we see,
and one of the reasons we’re expanding our
ventilator dependent program, is that lot of the
children needing this type of care are going out
of state because of lack of available services or
placement options. That’s heart wrenching for
the family! I can’t imagine what it must be like for

someone to not be able to see their child easily
because they are in another state.
Also, Medicaid managed care is the big
unknown. It hasn’t been implemented for
pediatrics yet and our population is a challenge
because they do have multiple hospital stays
over the course of their lives because they have
chronic long term needs. Managed care is still
trying to figure out how to handle the pediatric
inpatient population.
Schooling is also a challenge for medically
complex and fragile children. We have a school
onsite so all of our kids go to school. The John
A. Coleman School provides an education for
our children. Most of the children attending
are long term residents but we do have a few
kids who attend from the community. They
are bused to the school by their school district
when they cannot accommodate their needs.
Monday through Friday the kids are in school
all day where they receive both education
and socialization. We have early intervention,
preschool and school age programs.
What happens when they turn 21?
There are lots of challenges in that area. When
a child turns 16-18 we start looking for adult
placement because it often takes years to
find an acceptable location. Some children
clearly need nursing home level care but it’s
very difficult because they need a significant
amount of nursing and respiratory care and
not all facilities are able to accommodate that
(continued on page 22)

21

Adviser a publication of LeadingAge New York | Winter 2015