It's eight days before Christmas, and the hallways at Central Fairfax Services (CFS) in Springfield are abuzz with activity.
In the main room, a tree adorned with lights and bulbs beckons residents of the day-treatment facility, some of whom have donned red Santa hats for the day.
"This is a very exciting time for everybody here. You can feel it if you walk through the building. All the decorations are up, there’s music," said Annett Pohlman, a program coordinator at CFS, a nonprofit organization located on Commercial Drive, which provides therapy and other services for adults with mental retardation and severe or multiple disabilities.
Now in its 32nd year, CFS approaches the holiday season as just another opportunity to meet the needs of individuals who require assistance to perform even the most basic daily tasks.
"We talk a lot about disability when someone comes into the program, but after that we don’t pay a lot of attention to disability. What we look at is ability," said Paul Wexler, director of CFS.
"This fellow can’t move his legs, there’s nothing we can do about that," he said. "He can move his arms. Now what can we do with that, what can we teach him?"
All of the 205 day clients in CFS currently have severe or multiple disabilities. Most have mental retardation, and others have accompanying physical disabilities, including partial or complete loss of hearing, sight or ambulation. Others have autism or cerebral palsy.
THE MISSION of CFS since its inception has been to provide care for each of these individuals, based on a specialized program that is crafted for each client.
"We try to find out what the person needs and what they want to do and are capable of doing, and craft an individualized program for that individual," said Wexler.
Among the services CFS provides are a range of physical therapies, in addition to developmental skills, self-help skills, behaviors, motor skills, socialization, personal care, and more specific topics like money management and basic academics.
Clients are referred to CFS based on the severity of their disabilities and their needs. Most are graduates from Fairfax County Public Schools' special-education program and enter the program between the ages of 22 and 25. Many live in group homes and are bused to CFS each day by 8:30 a.m. Buses leave to take them home by 4 p.m. Clients pack their lunches and work with the more than 90 full-time staff members to make sure they achieve their goals, whether as simple as tying one's own shoes, or as complex as achieving the degree of independence necessary to take on part-time employment, which CFS also provides, through contracts with businesses like Canon Office Products.
"I think in general, everybody who works here in all their different assignments, it gets very overwhelming at certain times. But the general picture from the staff is that’s what they’ve always wanted to do," said Pohlman.
CFS was formed in 1967 as an extension of the Northern Virginia Association of Retarded Children (ARC), when several Fairfax County families of adults with disabilities expressed an interest in regular care. CFS met first at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Fairfax, then moved to its own property on Sunset Lane in Annandale, where it was housed for 12 years. In the mid 1990s, Wexler said, his organization began looking for a facility that was more accessible to clients in wheelchairs. In 1996, CFS found a building partially occupied by Virginia Concrete, on Commercial Drive in north Springfield. The building's other tenants began moving out.
"It was one of those needle-in-a-haystack opportunities, that when the former tenant was downsizing, we were upsizing," he said.
IN 1998, CFS had the majority of the lower floor, 45,000 square feet, to itself. It has spent the past six years working to make the building as custom-fit for its needs as possible.
"When you move into someone else’s building, you’re sort of like a hermit crab, moving into someone else’s shell. We’re always trying to improve accessibility. Accessibility is the key," said Wexler, who said CFS has built changing rooms for clients, widened hallways, taken down walls and made other adjustments for its purposes. The building now includes a large main meeting room, several offices for staff, physical therapy rooms, changing rooms, and other rooms that are used for a variety of purposes, including wheelchair fittings, which are crucial for CFS' clients.
"We’re all very together here, very close. When our efforts bear fruit, you get to see that, and when we’ve not succeeded, we get to all sit down and say, ‘What can we try next?'" said Wexler, who has worked for CFS for 18 years and has a master's degree in social work.
As a nonprofit, CFS receives money from a variety of organizations, including the Fairfax-Falls Church, Arlington, and Alexandria Community Services Boards, which purchase services from them for their clients.
"What we hear from their families is that's a real value for [the clients]. They have a place to go and to be as effective as they can be, but also be monitored for their health needs," said Alan Wooten, director of Mental Retardation Services for the Fairfax County Community Services Board. The various Community Services Boards put together information on each potential client and make recommendations on what kinds of services they would require. CFS is one of three providers in the county that offer facility-based service with intensive care for those who require medical care.
"They're able to serve people who have a lot more physical impairment and may not be as ready for a community-based job," said Wooten.
Currently, Wexler said, CFS is maintaining a steady number of clients, with roughly the same number of clients entering the center each year as leaving it. The biggest challenge the center faces, he said, was increasing costs and steady revenue from the county, Medicaid, and other donations.
"Money is getting tighter and tighter," said Wexler. "It’s very indicative of the problems that a lot of charities face, flat revenues and rising costs."
Nevertheless, Pohlman and others who work for CFS said they can't imagine doing anything else.
"You get little rewards every day. Someone who has never talked to you, all of a sudden looks at you and smiles," she said.
"I have a commute that’s over an hour, and there might be other options for me to find something else, but I don’t want to. I like the place I come to every day."