Kelly Kenoyer
Sunshine Industries Unlimited restarted its day support services for local disabled adults on Aug. 31, following a months-long hiatus due to COVID-19.
The services, however, look much different than before, said Executive Director Brittany Maudlin.
“We have more than one external force working with us that creates the rules to allow us to do some things and not other things,” she said.
The arrival of COVID-19 in Linn County and the ensuing restrictions effectively shut down Sunshine in March, similar to what happened to local schools.
The organization laid off most of its employees and only employed a skeleton crew to maintain its building.
“We knew we were in good shape to try to navigate this without being in a position of immediate threat,” Maudlin said. When restrictions lifted a bit in May, the organization was able to begin providing landscaping services again, which continue.
Limited janitorial services are also back on the table, though clients aren’t performing those duties; staff are.
Getting clients back to work is very complicated, Maudlin said. Regulations mandate that Sunshine conduct individual team meetings with every single client, their support staff and their families for “an informed consent discussion” about the risks of returning to work. “They need to know that they absolutely have a choice to come back if they would like or that they could continue social distancing and stay at home,” she said.
Some clients have remained cautious and are staying home to socially distance, while others were “ecstatic” about returning to work. For those still at home, Maudlin said the organization is staying in contact as pen pals and by other means.
More recently, the Department of Human Services has issued guidelines that allow Sunshine to re-open its facility for base support services, albeit with only 10 people in the building at a time. Maudlin said only six clients are allowed in at a time, with three support staff and one administrator.
Administrative offices are completely segregated in a separate part of the building, with a separate entrance and restroom.
“We’ve had to do a lot of additional housekeeping measures,” Maudlin said, such as sanitizing the facility three to four times a day.
Sunshine is also working on implementing an afternoon shift in addition to the standard morning shift, so more clients will be able to get services.
They’ll be considered separate “cohorts,” so fewer people will be exposed in case of an outbreak.
“The facility services are already very safe. We have a lot of control in the facility setting,” Maudlin said, adding that community-based activities are still on hold. “We are not comfortable doing any types of services that will create unnecessary risk.”
When they do go back to community outings, Maudlin said they hope to keep many of them outdoors to reduce the risk of transmission.
With all the changes and increased operation, Sunshine has “about 70 percent of our workforce back, fairly close to where their schedules would have been, though they’re a little light on the hours,” Maudlin said.
Still, the organization isn’t profitable under current restrictions.
“Our revenue is a deficit to our expenses right now,” Maudlin said. “But we have so much community support and we’ve been financially responsible, so we can operate on a bleed model for a while.
“We have some concerns about operating that way for a long time… but as we grow our services, we can be sustainable. But we’re not out of the woods yet.”