The Maryland Home and Community Care Foundation (MHCCF) awarded $30,000 to LINC to fund The Home Service Project. The project brings adaptive computer technology to home-bound individuals with severe disabilities to assist them in communicating, controlling home appliances, and other daily activities. The persons who will be served under this grant have severe and chronic physical disabilities due to degenerative disorders (such as ALS and Multiple Sclerosis) or quadriplegia. These individuals are essentially home-bound as a result of their disabilities, or have difficulty traveling to and from LINC.
LINC will provide additional services under the grant, that will include:
- conducting needs assessments with each eligible individual to determine the technology aids (computer equipment, adaptive hardware, special software, environmental control units, etc.) that each person will find most useful;
- providing needed technology on loan from LINC’s Software/Equipment Lending Library for trial periods and during the time before funding for individuals’ purchases has been secured;
- assisting individuals in securing funding and purchasing the needed technology aids from commercial vendors;
- training individuals in the use of the technology they purchase (or borrow); and
- providing ongoing technical support to individuals who are using assistive technology.
It is expected that the technologies used by individuals served by the program will include voice-controlled computers, computers controlled by single switches that respond to simple motions (e.g., eyeblink switches), speech output systems to allow individuals to converse and speak over the telephone, computer-based telephone systems, and computer-controlled “environmental control” systems that allow the individual to control appliances such as televisions and thermostats.
LINC has previously provided services involving these technologies to home-bound persons on an occasional basis that included setting up a computer system for a person with ALS to allow access to a printer, telephone (via a computer-based environmental control unit), computer-based speech and Internet access; providing enlarged adaptive keyboards for people with advanced Multiple Sclerosis; providing screen reading software to accommodate people who are blind; and enabling Internet access for a person with serious disabilities due to Parkinson’s Disease.
LINC's technology staff will also provide collateral training, in the individual’s home, to the family members and/or caregivers who provide regular in-home support to the individual. This training will increase LINC’s ability to provide some ongoing technical support via telephone, rather than in person, and thereby conserve project resources.
Finally, LINC staff will also carry out “overhead” activities such as arranging for maintenance and repairs on loaned equipment, record-keeping of equipment and software loans, and recording the volume and content of services provided to each individual.
MHCCF awarded $147,000 in grants to organizations throughout the state to improve the quality of life for those in need of health and supportive services at home and in the community regardless of age. MHCCF seeks projects from non-profit organizations that reach individuals with unmet or underserved health care needs and programs. LINC's proposal met the foundation's criteria and LINC received the highest award for 1999.©
