Did You Know? Residential Resources

The Center for Independent Living is a name that represents our organizations drive to help disabled individuals on their journey to living independently. In that pursuit we offer many services that can help people get started on their journeys such as Community Inclusion, our Family Disability Navigator program, and our Step Ahead work program. However, sometimes our name can be a bit confusing if someone has never heard of CIL before. We are a center that promotes independent living, not a residential living facility. With our name and all the work we do for disability advocacy this can sometimes lead to individuals believing we offer live-in services. However, we do not provide live-in services or transportation services. Having said that, we will never leave behind any individual coming to us for help. If someone calls our organization asking for help with housing or transportation, we don’t tell them no and move on, we give them information about available resources and we will always provide assistance in the areas where we can help.

When someone calls regarding residential living services the first thing we do is direct them to Community Inclusion. From there members of our Community Inclusion team will find out the exact needs of the individual and give them information and other resources regarding potential living facilities or other organizations that provide services CIL does not. While we strive to help as many people as possible, CIL is not equipped to service certain areas, and there are so many organizations that can help people where we may not be able to. Just because we can’t help in a specific way is never a reason for us to not help in other ways. CIL strongly believes in fostering community and support networks. One way we do this is by connecting people with organizations that can meet their specific needs such as live-in facilities, food pantries, disability aid distributors, and more. Information and referral are also important parts of the work we do. So never feel afraid to call CIL for questions or assistance, even if you’re not sure we can help directly, we’ll always direct you to someone who can.