Log Cabin Democrat Features: Dedicated to living 4/3/98

Published Friday, April 03, 1998

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Friday, April 3, 1998 Peggy Schneider, director of Independent Living Services, will be honored for her contribution to the organization and the community during a celebration Friday, April 17.MIke Kemp PhotoDedicated to living

Peggy Schneider to be honored for 28 years of service

Last modified at 1:06 p.m. on Friday, April 3, 1998

By FRED PETRUCELLI

Log Cabin Staff Writer

A celebration of hope, heart and honor will venerate Peggy Schneider, who has devoted most of her life to serving the most vulnerable people in the community.

The estimable words of hope, heart and honor are inexorably linked to Mrs. Schneider, director of Independent Living Services Inc. and Creative Living Inc. of Conway, whose 1970 dream of creating an organization to provide community homes and independent living training for people with developmental disabilities in the community has become a reality.

The celebration, supported by the Foundation for Independent Living, will be held at 6 p.m. Friday, April 17, at Conway Country Club. The occasion will include dinner, libations, silent and live auctions and a tribute to Mrs. Schneider, who has taken a starting budget of $12,500 and elevated it to its current figure of $1.4 million.

It is Mrs. Schneider's contention that since the bulk of this money, plus the spending of residents, is spent locally, ILS is a large contributor toward Conway's economic growth. "And ILS looks forward to continued growth with Conway though its wonderful support of ILS programs," she says.

Consistent with her linkage with the community, the fete for Mrs. Schneider will attract people in the region familiar with the accomplishments of this dedicated friend and champion of the disabled.

Auctioneers during the evening will be former Hendrix College professor Bob Meriwether; state Sen. Stanley Russ; Woody Cummins, a city council member employed at the state Department of Higher Education; Conway banker Bill Johnson; and Counseling Associates' Sheila Whitmore.

Tickets for the affair are $45 for singles and $75 for a couple. The silent auction will commence at 6 p.m. and dinner will be at 7. A tribute to Mrs. Schneider is slated for 7:30 p.m. and a live auction will be held at 8 p.m.

Road to ILS

So how did it come about, this social entity called ILS? The entity has become an avenue that offers people with developmental disabilities a chance to become more independent, to learn skills that allow them to become self-supporting with a job and an apartment of their own or to obtain the training to reach their highest level of functioning possible?

It is the spring of 1970 and Mrs. Schneider is employed at the Arkansas Children's Colony (now the Conway Human Development Center). She, Carol McGee, Jan Guthrie and the late Lucy Belle Markham are immersed in plans to open a community home for young men with mental retardation outside of the Children's Colony. A government grant gets the project off the ground and Mrs. Schneider becomes the director.

Placing emphasis on the premise that most of the older residents of the Children's Colony did not need institutional care, ILS came into being as a private, non-profit agency to obtain housing and employment opportunities for these adults.

Mrs. Schneider recalls vividly the terror of trying to give substance to these ideas with extremely limited funds and hardly any expertise in this venue.

Turning to advice and counsel from professors at Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas), she was able to gain some expertise from them in areas of special education, psychology, rehabilitation and counseling.

"During that time I was recruited by the Conway Junior Auxiliary. I decided on a community group home for women as my provisional project for the club," she recalls. "The club adopted the project and 'Reynolds House' -- named for Gladys Reynolds, a founding member of the club -- was begun."

Subsequently, ILS became an agency of the United Way (then named the Community Fund) and its existence was assured.

"I served on its board and I have always been an advocate of that agency," she says. "ILS receives a large donation from the United Way each year to meet the federal and state matching requirements."

Active role

One of the many effective avenues of service she pursued included the organization of the Faulkner County Alliance for service providers. And pushing for inclusion of ILS in a bond issue, which resulted in the construction of the Creative Living Home on Hubbard Road.

Mrs. Schneider's vita is crammed with notices of memberships and connections in local, state and national organizations that influence social services. She is particularly proud of her inclusion in the National Conference on Disabilities, which eventually led to the writing of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) applications and the eventual funding of community housing. She has been an Arkansas representative on the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, now the President's Committee on Mental Retardation.

She played an active role in the development of a provider association for people with developmental disabilities. She held every office in the group, which went through several name changes until it settled on Community Resource Network.

"I was appointed to serve on the Arkansas Children's Colony Human Development Center Advisory Council and wrote HUD applications to build group homes and apartments for many people we serve and those waiting for services in Faulkner County," she noted.

Throughout the years, Mrs. Schneider has worked diligently with legislators, parents and families keeping them informed of the issues of the day that impact on people with disabilities. In the 1980s, she began advocating for small intermediate care facilities for the retarded.

"Finally, in 1988 our efforts paid off and ILS became a part of a large bond issue to develop 30 small homes that would provide more comprehensive residential services to 300 people with developmental disabilities. Construction was completed in 1990.

In retrospect, she recalls, "I have spoken to many groups and or workshops, been a member of many professional associations and had enough training in law, regulatory practices and all aspects of serving people with disabilities in a community setting. I also competed a master's degree in psychology during all of this. It has been a wonderful life."

At the center of ILS programs -- Mrs. Schneider is wont to say at the heart -- are local individuals who serve on boards of directors. " They, and the support of parents, makes ILS one of the strongest of community agencies," she asserts. "Their courage to develop goals and work toward growth and development of community services is unparalleled across the state."

Currently, ILS and its related corporations, Sheltered Living Services and Creative Living, provide services to 100 people with disabilities. ILS manages four group homes and an apartment complex that specializes in independent living training.

Additionally, ILS provides services such as transportation, personal care, financial management, case management, classes in adult development and supported living services to people with disabilities living in Conway on their own. ILS employs 70 full and part time employees to provide these services.

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