Home for Adults with Autism Gets Approval from the State

cape-cod-villageORLEANS – A home for adults with autism in Orleans is one step closure to construction after it recently received approval from the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

Cape Cod Village is a 15-unit home that will be located on 4 acres in the center of Orleans.

The village will also include a community resources building for others in the local community with intellectual disabilities.

Bob Jones, the president of the board of directors for Cape Cod Village and who has a son with autism, said the project is critically important.

“They’re a very vulnerable population,” Jones said. “In the past they’ve really not been guaranteed any permanent homes.”

The home will be for individuals with severe autism that would normally be working in group homes.

“Sometimes [the group homes] are adequate sometimes they are not, but they are not permanent,” Jones said.

The project is a community effort and has received the support and community preservation act funding from the town’s of Orleans, Wellfleet and Brewster.

“I’ve just been blown away by the incredible reception this project has received from the people in the community,” Jones said.

The project received approval in part due to its central location in town.

“It ensures that the folks living there will be integrated into the larger community and not isolated as tends to happen too often with some of the group homes,” Jones said.

Jones said one of the reasons the project started five years ago was to build a model that can be followed in the future.

“If we could get our project done and done right, that it was a model that could be replicated again and again because the demand – the need – is so overwhelming,” he said. “If we can do this right, we are hopeful that other people can replicate it and provide homes for all the other adults that will be needing them.”

Jones said they hope to have the doors open by the summer of 2018.

The project will cost an estimated $6 million. Jones said they are actively fundraising.

By BRIAN MERCHANT, CapeCod.com NewsCenter

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