Family Services of Blair County

Daylight Savings Time has arrived and Mother Nature has already teased us with some warm weather. The cold nights and warm days are hard to beat!

Employees, board members, and volunteers are urged to register for the June 2, 2005 Agency Recognition Luncheon. The location will be Laurel Lodge, where we had a very good experience last year. The lodge is very comfortable and the scenery is beautiful.

As has been the case for the past four years, Gunter and his team are busy preparing for the 5-10K Walk Run Race on Sunday, May 15. The event will again be hosted by Penn State Altoona, a great collaborator to work with! A Lollipop Race will be added this year for the children, which should be a great addition to the morning's activities. Please encourage your family and friends who are into running and/or walking to pay their fee to register as a participant in this important fundraiser.

Tickets are also being sold for a Longaberger Raffle that will be held each day in June. Baskets and Pottery from the famous company based in Ohio will be given away.

I have told you about fundraising events as a lead in to the preparation of our 2005-2006 Budget. We will be initiating our annual giving campaign this summer as we have many needed programs that will be continuing and adding new components, while some new, exciting programs will be initiated during the new operating year. State and federal funds will be tight for the next few years, so contributions will be very important to our ability to continue the development of new programs. The needs are certainly there!!

We know that the finalization of the budget is always a major challenge. The guidance from Mary Ann Hoover and committed participation of program and department directors, along with the board and its finance committee will assuredly allow us to get the job done so the board can approve the budget at its 6/30/05 meeting.

One of our more exciting opportunities is to provide programming services for the new men's shelter in Altoona. It will be owned and maintained by Blair County Community Action Agency.

Lifestyle Support Services is a new service provided out of our Developmental Disabilities Program. These services are individualized to provide assistance to persons who either wish to learn new skills to assist them to reach their greatest potential or to actually provide support services for them. We anticipate that the services can be used by persons with mental retardation, those recovering from accidents, and people who simply need assistance due to advanced age or disability. Kathy Baskin and Cathy McFee have worked very hard to develop these services.

In other news, both the DD Program (Residential, ADP, and FLP) and the Teen Shelter had excellent licensing and site visits within the last two months. Thanks to Cathy McFee and her team, along with Peggy Campbell and her team for doing such a great job all year. These inspection and site visits always look back at the entire period since the last visit - the results don't simply depend on the cleanliness of a program area on the day of the visit. Sam Claar and John Patterson also deserve a thank you for their maintenance help, completing the listed requests from each facility as inspection and site visit time drew near.

I hope that everyone has a delightful early summer. Watch for future news about program additions, a Family Services Night at The Curve in August, as well as our second Longaberger Basket Bingo Event.

Mahlon Fiscel
Executive Director