Mary's Children Family Center will start taking full advantage of its half-million- dollar building expansion at the start of January by using excess space for services, including a new respite program.

The mission of Mary's Children in Clawson is to service people aged 18-55 who have suffered from a brain injury beyond repair and who need intense rehabilitation through cognitive lessons and social interaction. The program is offered in three semesters. Clients can attend one to five days a week and take classes as often as they like. Currently, there are 15 active clients and a handful of clients who are not well enough to join a session.

"Since we have 15 now, there is room to double," Director Christine Lynch said.

The renovation was completed in February, however, Lynch said it's been a matter of deciding where to go from here. Mary's Children intends to open the respite floor, which contains six bedrooms. All beds have rails and, as in the rest of the facility, the floor has accessible restrooms. Lynch noted that the program will start slowly, allowing students to sleep overnight at the facility for a week each month.

"We've been asked by parents. There is a need in this area," Lynch said. "We are first going to offer the night slots to our own clients, then the community."

Help needed

Although Mary's Children will continue the program come the first of the year, the facility still needs donations to purchase a generator to ensure the elevator is operating at all times. Factors like this are extremely important for the clientele, who are mostly in wheelchairs.

"Our clientele is very diverse. Some people use their hands better than they can concentrate; some can concentrate better than they can use their hands," Lynch said. "We try to teach them something every given day that addresses every level."

Besides spending every waking hour in wheelchairs, most clients are nonverbal. However, nurse Ruthanne Pettey noted that the volunteers and staff that work with the students daily know what they need, when they need something and have found ways to communicate with them.

Impacting lives

With exercise strategies, craft, games such as bowling on Nintendo Wii, optional Christian service and more, volunteers and staff can influence the lives of the people who attend.

"I'm very comfortable with the program and leaving my daughter there," Elaine Weaver said. "I couldn't ask for her to be at a better place."

Prior to coming across Mary's, Weaver had tried to find a suitable program for her daughter, Leesa, who has Rett syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system. Weaver said her daughter is one of the longest living cases of the disease. In her nine years of attendance at Mary's, Weaver has seen significant improvements in Leesa's movement and outlook.

"Before she went to Mary's, she couldn't even bring an eating utensil to her mouth, and now she can feed herself," Weaver said.

She described how depressed Leesa used to be, with night-long crying episodes. Now, Leesa is mostly cheery.

"She's happy there and that's the most important thing to us. That, and that her needs are being met," Weaver said.

"We started this with a dream," said co-founder Marilyn Joseph.

Building the dream

Joseph created the concept for Mary's Children with co-founder Trudy Koci whom she met because her daughter, Doreen, was attending the same program as Koci's son Adam. Both  children are disabled and had nowhere to turn nearly 20 years ago. After Joseph and Koci struggled to find an appropriate place for their children to be socialized and educated, they set off to start their own group.

"There was just nothing for young adults after they got out of school, only school and then retirement homes for seniors -- nothing in between," Joseph said.

Joseph said she remembers taking Doreen to different programs before Mary's opened and classes were too big to fit Doreen's needs. After calling everywhere seeking a program and realizing they needed to start their own, they started with night lessons. Originally, there were few students and they soon discovered they needed a permanent place for their non-profit, and they thought Clawson seemed like the ideal location. In 2000, the program inhabited the building it is in now.

Since then, the program has grown, and Joseph expects to see it grow further. With growth, Mary's will need to hire more staff and find additional volunteers, to keep up with its 2:1 client-staff ratio, Joseph said.

"We really rely on donations and volunteers to operate," she said.