In collaboration with the Billings School District, AWARE began in September serving middle and high school-aged adolescents with autism spectrum disorders at its day treatment program, the Enterprise Learning Center. All are students of the school district. The Enterprise Learning Center adheres to a curriculum of advanced behavioral strategies that employ the core principles of applied behavior analysis, a leading approach in the treatment of people with autism spectrum disorders. The Enterprise Learning Center provides a structured, individualized small group environment with objectives that are developed by an interdisciplinary team. Those objectives focus on functional academics and life skills curricula incorporating personal/social, pre-vocational, daily living and recreation/leisure.

AWARE launches Apostrophe, a quarterly magazine of, by and for people with developmental disabilities. Each quarter, AWARE prints 9,000 copies of Apostrophe and distributes them around the state. The magazine has a paid circulation of more than 350, with subscribers in 26 states and four Canadian provinces.

AWARE Candlelight Home

AWARE opens homes for children with autism in Bozeman and Missoula. AWARE’s Candlelight Community Living Initiative, which opened on May 1, 2008, in Bozeman, serves four young people from around the state who have intense developmental and behavioral needs such as those arising from autism spectrum disorders. The children range in age from 10 to 16, and each child attends public school. In 2009, AWARE opened Frazer Court in Missoula, another home for children with autism.

In 2007, AWARE opened the Lewis and Clark County Children's Advocacy Center, which provides both financial and professional support to the program. Working exclusively in Lewis and Clark County, the Center consolidates and streamlines the interviews and examinations a child victim of sexual abuse undergoes during an investigation.

Further, this method of investigation lessens the level of trauma for the child, and allows for healing to begin more quickly than older methods. Frequently, AWARE has provided services for adults and children with developmental disabilities who have challenging behavior and significant needs.

In addition, many of the adults and children AWARE serves are individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

Nurse Happy Richards and Leonard Lamping at the remodeled Porphyry Home in Butte.

Within the last three years, AWARE has grown to fulfill the needs of children with significant needs in New Mexico. This sprouted from AWARE’s belief that whenever possible youngsters should be kept in or near their communities, in hopes that the family can be involved in the child's recovery. There are many similarities between Montana and New Mexico, not the least of which is the need for rural health care, and making resources available to people who may not live in or near an urban area. Further, New Mexico has a high population of low-income and/or Native populations, which makes the need for wraparound and community based service more urgent.

AWARE provides Intensive Community Based Rehabilitation for people 65 or younger. What makes this service unique is its wraparound concept, bundling case management, nursing (if necessary), and psychiatry (if necessary). This intensive residential service focuses on creating a normal home environmental and integrating people into the community with nursing services provided within the facility to assure that we meet intensive medical and psychiatric needs. Those who have a serious disabling mental illness and Medicaid are eligible for this service

Andy Doggett, Joe Kroll and Leonard Lamping take in the sun at their home in Butte.

In 2007, adults from the Total Care Unit at the Montana Developmental Center in Boulder traded institutional life for a home in neighborhood in Butte. The last resident from the unit moved into her new home on Sampson Street in Butte on June 26, 2007.Through an initiative led by AWARE, she and 13 other people are doing everyday things other Montanans who haven’t been shut away in institutions do. AWARE won a contract with the state in December 2005 to transition 14 residents of the unit to community living. A home formerly occupied to young people on Porphyry Street underwent the most extensive changes to accommodate people who require intensive, 24-hour-a-day care.

AWARE installed special equipment at a cost of about $70,000, including a state-of-the-art Horcher lift system that allows staff to move residents around the house in a sling on a ceiling-mounted track. Some of the people who moved from Boulder had lived in the institution for as long as 25 years. A few had lived nearly their entire lives there.

AWARE has built a half dozen clean and modern homes.

AWARE has either developed or partnered with vital outreach projects since 2001. One such project developed by AWARE is the Montana Home Choice Coalition, which has strong support from the Fannie Mae Foundation.

The Coalition, founded in 2004, secured a $325,000 grant to help people affected by disabilities to buy a home and live independently. The project has been enormously successful, developing almost $13 million in new housing resources for the disabled, and creating almost 50 new homeowners since its began.

AWARE incorporated wrestling moves into its H.E.L.P. training program.

The Galen Campus is home of AWARE’s own internal training program, H.E.L.P. (Helping Employees Leading People in need), a state-accredited program developed by AWARE employees. AWARE started work on the training program in 2003. All staff, especially those in direct care positions, are trained and certified through H.E.L.P.

The detailing shop can clean a vehicle top to bottom in a day.

In 2002, AWARE became a qualified provider for children's developmental disability services. Later that year, AWARE began delivering Intensive Family Education and Support Services to youngsters with developmental disabilities and intensive needs in western Montana. (The service was expanded in 2007 to the entire state.)

Also in 2002, AWARE began providing residential, work/day, and transportation services for consumers in Billings. These services include intensive group home services, senior group home services, congregate living services, supported living services, community support services, work/day Services ranging from facility-based work to competitive employment, and family-style transportation. Services are individualized and offer consumers a variety of choices of supports and services.

AWARE helps pre-school children get a Head Start

In 1998, AWARE initiated its Early Head Start program in addition to Early Childhood Support Services. Early Head Start offers a variety of child development and early childhood education service To infants and toddlers who meet federal low-income guidelines.

Approximately 15 percent of the children served by Early Head Start are children with developmental delays or disabilities. In addition, the program provides family development and family support services to parents and pregnant women. These services are provided for infants, toddlers, pregnant women, and families in Butte-Silver Bow and Beaverhead counties. Early Childhood service provides home-based family education and support for families whose children (ages 0-6) are experiencing serious emotional and behavioral difficulties. We also provide support for children in community settings, such as childcare or Head Start.

AWARE helps pre-school children get a Head Start

In 1997, AWARE recognized the need for less restrictive community support services for children and young people and developed youth case management services, family-based support services, outpatient services (group, individual, and family counseling), therapeutic foster care, transitional living, and comprehensive school and community treatment.

The Anaconda Range looms in the background in this view from the Galen Campus

AWARE opened its Galen campus in 1997. Intensive Residential Behavioral Services at Galen are for children who demonstrate significant behavioral difficulties and mental health issues, including children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. In order to address the exceptional needs of these children, we provide highly individualized care and more intensive support than is available in other community group homes.

Galen's program includes seven intensive therapeutic homes, intensive residential behavioral services, outpatient therapy, psychiatric services, functional behavioral assessment, educational services case management, and related services such as occupational, physical and speech therapy. Great Divide Special Education Cooperative operates the school program at Galen, including special education services, through the Powell County School District. AWARE staff provide day treatment services.

In 1991, AWARE added Case Management Services to serve adults with developmental disabilities in the 17 counties of Eastern Montana, plus Big Horn and Carbon counties. This service delivers quality case management throughout the approximately 66,000 square miles in the area. Case managers deliver culturally sensitive services and serve the Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Fort Peck reservations. We help transition students in all the school districts and educational cooperatives in these counties.

AWARE contracted with state in 2007 to expand case management to additional adults affected by developmental disabilities in Missoula County, and 65 in the Billings/Columbus area, bringing the total number of adults served by AWARE Case Management to more than 500 individuals, including those already served by AWARE in Eastern Montana.

Residents and staff enjoy a sunny afternoon on the patio of an AWARE youth group home.

In 1990, AWARE added Intensive Residential Community Based services (Intensive Group Homes) to serve young people who have a serious emotional disturbance. The program started with the service and three homes in Butte. It has since expanded throughout Montana and into New Mexico

Also in 1990, AWARE built two new homes in Anaconda, using a similar design and floor plan, to serve adults affected by developmental disabilities in Anaconda.

Need a lift? AWARE has been providing rides to people with disabilities since 1989.

1989, AWARE added to its capabilities with a contract for transportation for individuals with developmental disabilities living in and around Butte. The program was intended to transport people to and from activities, including the Butte Sheltered Workshop.

Later that year, AWARE secured a grant through the Rehabilitation Division of Montana State Rehabilitation Services. Since then, AWARE has expanded its transportation service to include a Para Transit program that provides about 800 rides each month for people with disabilities and the elderly to and from work, home, and play.

Residents of Madison Home, AWARE’s first group home

In 1980, AWARE added a group home for people who were being liberated from institutions, many of them after spending nearly all their lives in dormitories at the Montana Developmental Center Program at Boulder, Montana. At the time, five people living in the AWARE group home were former MDC residents.

AWARE got started in the furniture refinishing business in the late 1970s.

AWARE’s Adult Services began in 1976 to meet the needs of people affected by developmental disabilities living in the Anaconda area. A group of parents, sitting around a kitchen table discussing the hopes and dreams of their children, decided to open a day center in the basement of the Serbian Church on East Park Avenue.

The effort was so successful that they moved to a shop farther east on Park two years later and opened a furniture refinishing business to augment the day center. Gradually the enterprise began accepting aluminum cans and cardboard for recycling. Further growth and the need for more space led to another move to the Anaconda Brewery building across the street. Furniture refinishing is a part of AWARE’s past, but recycling continues.

Today AWARE is the largest recycler in Southwest Montana with facilities in Butte and Anaconda. In the fall of 2007, AWARE opened a new 12,000-square-foot recycling center on the northeast edge of Anaconda. Several of the people who started in the church basement now work in productive jobs at the recycling center and adjacent Hope Thrift Store.