A Message from the Director

Welcome and thank you for checking out our website!

For many years I have successfully worked with hundreds of youth with disabilities, transforming lives, empowering families and strengthening communities.  My heart, my wallet, and most of my time on this earth is spent trying to provide young adults with disabilities the very same opportunities individuals without disabilities have in their own lives.

All About Abilities Inc. was founded mainly to help young adults with disabilities find their vocational path in life based upon their interests and abilities, as well as to engage young adults with disabilities in social activities once the yellow bus stops coming.      

Since the organization's founding, I have fielded many contacts from concerned parents of youth with disabilities letting me know that their special needs children are either about to graduate from high school or have recently graduated high school and DO NOT have jobs, need help finding work, yet are not adequately prepared to enter the workforce. Additionally, in most cases, their children are not socially engaged after high school graduation and are sitting home doing nothing.

Currently, youth with disabilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania participate in transition services as required by law, but many are ill prepared for adult life upon graduation. Schools do the best job that they can, but have limited and ever-shrinking resources to be able to work with all of their growing special needs population.

Partially because of this reason, THOUSANDS of youth with disabilities in our area graduate high school each year without jobs and sit at home staring at TV sets and computer screens, disconnected from society, wasting their unearthed talents and wondering what they're going to do with the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately, there's a prevailing thought that if someone is classified with a disability, for the rest of his/her life he/she should either A) Work in a sheltered workshop, B) Bag groceries, C) Never work at all. But many parents feel that their children with special needs- as well as the children with special needs themselves- can do more than bag groceries or work in a sheltered workshop.

All About Abilities Inc. provides an Option D for young adults with disabilities: Enter into a career of THEIR choice- not someone else's!

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, individuals with disabilities have a 62% higher unemployment rate than their non-disabled peers. These young adults with disabilities need all of the help they can get- especially in today's economy where youth with disabilities are competing for entry-level jobs with experienced job-seekers with colleges degrees!

The other main area of our organization's focus is socialization for young adults with disabilities. 

• According to the American Association of People with Disabilities, next to having a job, socialization is the most important factor which determines whether persons with disabilities will lead meaningful lives. 

• According to the National Institute on Mental Health, individuals with disabilities have a significantly HIGHER RATE of depression and suicide when they are not engaged in social activities.

Many young adults with disabilities do not socialize after graduating from high school because the yellow bus stopped transporting them to where their peers used to be; for the very first time since they were five, they now find themselves alone all day with no school, no jobs, and little to do.

Few of these recent graduates have jobs that would ordinarily help them socialize, and any school-based activities these young adults may have previously participated in at their former high schools no longer exist since they graduated and are no longer the school's responsibility.

Many of these individuals are ill prepared for adult life and need opportunities to socialize, network for vocational, educational and recreational purposes, and continue their life's learning. They need help!

All About Abilities Inc. is part of the solution because we work diligently to improve the quality of life for young adults with disabilities- whether through vocational training, supported employment services or one of our innovative programs to foster socialization and community engagement.

The organization is not trying to reinvent the wheel; only trying to provide more wheels (supplementary services) to more young adults with disabilities in order to engage them in social activities, broaden their vocational goals, and increase their visibility in our community in jobs they have an interest in, not just bagging groceries or working in a sheltered workshop.