Page 2 - 2020-Impact-Report

Pivoting During a Time of Crisis

When the shelter-in-place requirements were announced in mid-
March, the DSCBA immediately sent our staff home (to continue working
remotely) and closed our physical doors in many locations throughout
the Bay Area to protect the health of our employees, volunteers, and the
hundreds of families we serve through our many direct programs. We then
strategized about how we could best meet our members’ needs while
strictly following health and safety guidelines.
Full-time phone and email support has always been a significant part
of our work, and we knew this way of communicating would be much
more important during quarantine. It is critical that we are available to our
members, especially our medical community partners and families who have received a
new diagnosis. We are the place a family will often receive their first congratulations and
an immediate welcome into a warm and compassionate community. Support groups—we
have many for the whole family—are also extremely important. We transitioned these to an
online platform, which actually increased attendance in many cases because they became
accessible to our more distantly located members.
Our direct services, such as our one-of-a-kind THRIVE program (formerly known as
Peer Development), serve hundreds of members with Down syndrome of all ages every
week. Our members look forward to THRIVE and we knew they would miss their friends.
We gathered up our THRIVE facilitators and put 10 weekly Zoom classes together so our
participants could come together for meaningful socialization, learning, and friendship.
The smiles on our members’ faces when they see each other is priceless. THRIVE
online is not the same as in person, but we are having fun and creatively encouraging
participation, and families tell us their children/adults love it.
We are proud that our organization not only serves our members, but also supports
medical and education professionals throughout the Bay Area. We know these partnerships
create the best possible outcomes throughout a family’s journey. Traditionally, we go into
schools, offering one-of-a-kind and very popular trainings, classroom consultations, ability
awareness presentations, and much more.
To best support the educational needs of our school-aged children with Down
syndrome, their parents, and their education teams, who were now faced with facilitating
virtual learning at home, we created TEACH, a weekly online empowerment series. This
series inspires participants and offers practical strategies to implement daily. The series
provides families and educators the insight they need to teach their children/students and
understand how to include them in distance learning. TEACH has been a great success. We
are very proud of our families who attend weekly to learn and provide feedback.
Lastly, we learned toward the latter part of this year that based on scientific data our
members, older adults, those with compromised immune systems, and those with pre-
existing conditions are more likely to be greatly impacted or face death due to the severity
of symptoms and inability to fight the virus if they were to contract COVID-19. Our number
one priority is to follow state and local guidelines about reopening. However, in addition to
those guidelines we are seriously taking into consideration the vulnerability of our members
before considering reopening our doors.
THANK YOU for being a part of the DSCBA. Thanks to your support, we continue to
help families throughout the Bay Area to thrive.

Nancy LaBelle, Executive Director
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