Setting Goals for People with Developmental Disabilities
Chances are you’ve taken time out of your schedule at some point to make a plan or set goals for events and activities in your life in order to make life improvements and to keep your life on an intended path of continuous self improvement. For individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the routine and predictability in daily activities that comes out of goal setting is even more important for their daily success.
Setting goals and planning towards self improvement is something that we strive to support and encourage in our developmental disability services at Hands of Heartland as we work to improve the lives of individuals with IDD and their families in the Omaha and Bellevue metropolitan markets. Let’s dig into some of the ways people with IDD can incorporate goal setting in order to work towards specific disability aims and objectives.
Crucial to Incorporate Goal Setting Early in Life
Because there are going to be additional challenges and setbacks throughout an adult with IDD’s life, it’s important to set plans and establish goals early in life. In doing so, you set the stage early for helping them understand that they have agency and control over their lives, which further encourages forward momentum along the roadmap you’ve helped them develop.
Setting Goals for Every Aspect of Life
It’s important when teaching and supporting goal setting behavior to help individuals with IDD to look at all parts of their lives and to develop a well-rounded approach to setting goals for managing their disability, so that their disability doesn’t prevent them from enjoying the world to the fullest extent.
Physical Goals
It’s just as important and equally challenging for individuals with IDD to incorporate physical fitness activities into their daily routines. This should include activities that help to improve fine motor skills, develop dexterity, and to keep them active and mobile.
Social Development Goals
Helping individuals with IDD to become more actively involved with their community helps to better prepare them for future social integration. Learning to better communicate and verbalize their needs can be accomplished by planning out activities in order to prioritize social engagement over the course of each week in different settings will help them be better able to contribute to future projects for community development and improvement.
Intellectual Development Goals
In order to work towards future supported employment opportunities, it’s important to help individuals with IDD identify areas of interest and then help create goals for improving the necessary skills and abilities that will position them to achieve a position along their chosen career path.
Financial Independence Goals
Much of the work we do at Hands of Heartland is geared towards helping our clients to achieve a degree of independence through their living and employment situations. In order to accomplish this, it’s crucial to include a level of financial goal setting in the work we do with them to manage their aims and objectives.
Hands of Heartland Helps You Live Your Best Life
Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities thrive on structured activities and do best when they have a plan to guide their daily lives. At Hands of Heartland, we understand the important role that goal planning can have in helping to establish aims and objectives for our disabled clients.
From our day services and residential services to our supported employment programs and community service and Create-ables spaces, our developmental disability services in the Omaha and Bellevue metropolitan areas are designed to help promote the independence and future community integration of those under our care.