A longtime Idaho Falls nonprofit that exists to help people with disabilities celebrated its newly renovated facility with a Greater Idaho Falls Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting Wednesday.
“This has been a very, very long process for us,” said Michael Lefevor, executive director of Life, A Center for Independent Living at 985 N. Capital Ave. “We started this process maybe five years ago.”
Before moving to its current location the center previously operated an office at 250 S. Skyline Drive, Suite 1 in Idaho Falls, where the Westside Branch of the Bonneville County Library now operates.
“We owned suites there and sold those,” Lefevor said, “and we’ve moved over here and had quite a bit of struggles trying to get construction done. But we finally finished it with a lot of help from some of the staff. We did some of the work ourselves.”
The center, previously known as LIFE Inc. and Living Independently for Everyone, evolved through a series of name changes and a merger. It originally began as the Center of Resources for Independent People.
“We’ve been around since 1980, in one way or another,” Lefevor said. “We’re federally mandated to exist. We’ve changed our names throughout the years, but we serve 18 counties in Southeast Idaho.”
The organization is dedicated to empowering people with disabilities to manage their own lives, make their own choices and live with dignity. The main office is in Pocatello with three regional field offices in Idaho Falls, Blackfoot and Burley. Center staff refer to people they help as consumers.
According to Lefevor, the center focuses on consumer control and offers five federally mandated core services to support independent living goals:
Advocacy: Assisting individuals in fighting for their rights and accessing public services.
Independent Living Skills: Providing training to handle daily tasks and manage personal care.
Information and Referral: Connecting people with local community resources and programs.
Peer Counseling: Offering mentorship from other individuals with disabilities who share similar life experiences.
Transition: Helping youth move into adulthood or assisting individuals transferring out of nursing facilities back into community living.
Beyond the core services, the Idaho Falls office provides specialized programs:
Personal Care Attendant Services: Self-directed, in-home help with bathing, cooking and household chores.
Assistive Technology Loan Bank: A program allowing individuals to test and borrow medical or technological equipment.
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Support: A dedicated demonstration center located at the Idaho Falls office.
“We work with people with disabilities across the lifespan,” Lefevor said. “If somebody wants to come in and they want to live independently, they come and visit with us.”
They meet with the consumer, discuss their disability and what they want to accomplish and create goals to help them be more independent.
“We have independent living specialists who can set those goals with them and start working towards them,” Lefevor said. “They get to set their own goals, and we work as hard as we can. We wear as many hats as we can to help them accomplish those goals.”
Chimdinma Ogbonna, independent living program manager at the center, said the goal is to help people, such as consumers who get discharged from hospitals and need assistance urgently. Currently the center has 17 staff members.
According to Ogbonna, the ribbon cutting will help raise awareness about the center.
“The biggest thing is to get people to know about us,” she said. “We’ve been around for over 40 years, but I don’t think a lot of people know about us. We have a lot of growth in Pocatello with people getting in and knowing what we’re doing. We’ll try to achieve the same thing here.
“Getting the word out, getting people to know that we’re here,” Ogbonna said. “We’re here to help people with disabilities by providing free services. We do feel like there’s a population here that would benefit from our services.”
The center also provides peer support.
“We’re required to have about 51 percent of our staff be people with disabilities,” Ogbonna said. “The goal is that whenever someone walks through those doors they’re meeting someone who has gone through a similar experience or is going through something similar. We also provide opportunities for people to come in and have groups and meet and discuss.”
The center also works with Medicaid and commonly assist consumers who participate in the Idaho Medicaid Aged and Disabled waiver program.
They offer personal assistant services where the consumer can hire and manage their own in-home care provider through Medicaid funding.
“We work with Medicaid to help people save their homes,” Lefevor said. “We help veterans manage their own budget. We work with the VA on that.”
The new renovations include a fully accessible kitchen for all disabilities.
“Those counters are lowered for anybody who uses a wheelchair,” Lefevor said as an example. “Now we can teach cooking classes.”
There are several other ways in which the center helps consumers.
Lefevor mentioned helping consumers with a disability transition back into the community from institutions, such as nursing homes or jail. The center also helps consumers stay out of institutions.
Staffers also assist consumers with disabilities transition out of high school and into adult life.
“We help them wherever they are in life,” Lefevor said, mentioning a veteran who needed a power wheelchair.
“He was struggling with the VA,” Lefevor said of the consumer. The center repaired a wheelchair someone donated and delivered it to him.
“It has been a lifesaver for him,” Lefevor said.
“One of my neighbors had some medical issues and was stuck in bed and couldn’t get out of bed himself,” Lefevor said. “That was a major issue for him. We were able to provide some assistive technology for him to be able to get out of bed on his own.”
There are many more examples, including a consumer who does artwork at home.
“He’s able to stay in his home and do these sculptures,” Lefevor said. “It’s his livelihood.”
In all the center has served 465 consumers this fiscal year in Southeast Idaho, he said.
“That’s over 3,000 services that we’ve provided to those individuals,” Lefevor said. “We’re very excited and very passionate about the work we do.”
For more information about the Idaho Falls office, call 208-529-8610.