Social Living Club - The Good Life, with Friends!

Community Safety

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Disability is Diversity, even when your disability stops you from speaking up for yourself. Since 2007, Golden Heart Ranch has served some of the most vulnerable people in LA: people with Intellectual/Developmental Disorders (I/DD), including many with severely impeded verbal communication. Angelenos with I/DD, and particularly non-verbal Angelenos, face some of this City's steepest barriers to participation in community life outside the home. As a result, 85% report feeling lonely most days and average only 3 people in their total social network vs. 125 for the median American. Without support, Angelenos with I/DD are at particular risk of falling off a social cliff after aging out of the public school system at 21. The effects of prolonged social isolation are sadly familiar to many people with I/DD and those who care for them: loneliness, reduced social confidence, regression in communication ability, and ultimately hopelessness and negative psychological/health outcomes.

Social Living Club safely bridges Angelenos with I/DD to a new level of connection with friends and community. We provide the skilled facilitators, planning, and transportation our participants rely upon to access quality social time with peers and be present out in our City. Our well-staffed programs enable progressive growth in social skills, improved life satisfaction, and equitable access to LA's most desirable amenities. Recent SLC experiences include a behind-the-scenes tour of Dodger Stadium, group restaurant dinners, 3-night camp at our Ranch, regular pizza & bowling nights, museum visits, volunteering, concerts, and countless other high-quality opportunities. A grant award from LA2050 will significantly expand our life-changing Social Living Club programs across LA, increasing our total annual participant-days from 1,200 to 1,850. We are requesting funding for startup costs to establish new programs that are built to become financially self-sustaining over time. We plan to offer an additional 12 weeks of Social Living Club camps through the grant term, or roughly one new week per month. A grant award would allow SLC to fund a half-time Program Lead position for one year to resource the planning and operation of the new camp. It would also pay the camp's direct costs for the first several months, allowing SLC to recruit and train committed staff. An additional week of camp per month would be a game-changing increase in SLC's capacity to serve Angelenos with I/DD.

People with I/DD will be significantly more visible in Los Angeles County as a result of Social Living Club's continued expansion. Our program participants are intellectually curious, deeply caring, and fully capable--expect to see us everywhere, proudly connecting the people we serve to the absolute best this region has to offer. Everywhere we go, SLC turns heads, draws smiles, and wins new allies. People smile at us on the street because we are direct action extending Community, Purpose, and Happiness into the lives of all people, no matter the complexity of their needs. With our growth, LA will develop a self-reinforcing ecosystem of raised expectations, better services, and more respect when it comes to expectations for people with I/DD and their right to live connected and fulfilled lives. SLC's innovative programs safely bridge our participants to the places and experiences they demand, in a way that is truly relevant to them, building a better and realer LA in the process.

Golden Heart Ranch measures the success of the Social Living Club by all available means. We track a robust set of Key Performance Indicators including unique individuals served, filled program places, participants' new friends, unique activities, and other important statistics that help us stay accountable to our participants, community, and partners. We also carefully evaluate the holistic satisfaction and growth of each individual program participant. A typical path through SLC could begin with an introduction at one of our regular community events, accessing new friends at regular dinners out, exploring the community together with day-long outings, and achieving a new level of independence and camaraderie with one of our three-night sleep-away camps. The attendant growth in confidence, social skills, personal agency, and joy is impossible to quantify but central to what we do. Our thoughtful KPIs help us maximize this non-quantifiable growth.