Caregiver’s approach: ‘How would I want to live?’

GLADSTONE — Thanks to Jenny Veenker, five developmentally disabled adults have a loving home in a suburban split-level made beautiful with paint and care.

On a recent fall evening, one of Veenker’s clients pours coffee at a granite-topped kitchen island. Another helps his wife of 25 years — both are mentally retarded — pull on a sweater.

Then all five of Veenker’s residents, ages 23 to 65, gather for a pre-dinner prayer, bowing heads in unison. The family dogs — Bella, Frankie and Bear — whimper in the laundry room while salad, homemade bean soup and grilled hamburgers are served around a formal dining room table.

This is what Oregon officials had in mind when they shut down Fairview Training Center for good and completed a transition to a community-based system of care for about 4,200 developmentally disabled adults.

The dedication of caregivers like Veenker can be easily overshadowed by stories of abuse and neglect elsewhere in the system. But thousands do inspiring work every day — and make a huge difference in their clients’ lives.

Some, like Veenker, are foster providers who run their homes like a small business. Others work in group homes, most of which are run by nonprofits that sometimes operate several facilities.

The work is demanding. Mental and physical disabilities of the residents can make it hard to communicate. Some have emotional or medical needs that take special care. Providers are responsible round-the-clock.

Veenker, 44, tries to put herself in their place.

“If I had a disability, how would I want to live?” she said. “My clients want what we all want. They want a happy life.”

Veenker opened her home in 2000, the same year Fairview closed, in part to make the system better. She was frustrated after working at what she felt was an uncaring state-licensed foster home in Hillsboro.

“They didn’t care about their clients,” she said. “I’d try to make breakfast, and the only thing I had in the home was bread and peanut butter. The owner had three homes and they were all run dangerously.”

“This is a lifestyle”

Veenker, who is single, lives with her clients. She receives about $15,000 a month from the state and spends the money on items and experiences that both she and her clients can enjoy.

“When people say you make a lot a money, I say, ‘Listen. This is not a job. This is a lifestyle,’” Veenker said. “When you put in all the time and hours, it’s like you give up your life. My clients are with us 24-7, every weekend, every holiday. ... Most of them have no family, or they’ve been abused. We are their family.”

In summer, she takes them camping and crabbing. Once she rented an RV for a vacation to Mexico.

“We had such a blast,” she said. “We swam in the ocean. They took showers outside in their bathing suits. They sat downtown and ate tacos and drank piña coladas. They went shopping in the markets.”

The trip proved special for 48-year-old Anne Rust, a mentally retarded woman who joined the home five years ago.

“She’s been in a cocoon all her life,” Veenker said. “She had a meltdown in the RV because she didn’t know what to do with her emotions. We talked her down and made light of the situation. Then she was wonderful. She acted like this was the first time she’s ever been in the world. She just experienced so many new things.”

Since then, Veenker said, Rust has bonded with her roommates and began decorating her room — something she had never done because she had moved so often from one state home to another.

Rewards like that balance the hard work. Veenker said she constantly juggles medical appointments for her clients, who have conditions that range from mental retardation to cerebral palsy.

She has virtually no privacy, and there are occasional meltdowns — like the time one resident mistakenly sprayed furniture polish on the home’s new leather couch, ruining it. Now, everyone laughs about the incident.

“Don’t talk about it,” joked the sprayer, Alexander Clark, 63. He lives at the home with his wife, Bonnie, 65.

Welcomes scrutiny

Veenker agreed that there isn’t enough oversight of foster homes. She said her Clackamas case manager visits monthly, but she knows that’s unusual. The case manager of a former client from another county “dropped him off and never came back,” she said.

Veenker welcomes the scrutiny. “I’m an independent individual, and it’s my business,” she said, “but it’s always nice to have someone looking over your shoulder.”

Every Sunday, she takes her clients to church. Afterward, they go out to IHOP, Shari’s or Denny’s. There is a special Sunday school for people with developmental disabilities, but Veenker’s clients insist on regular services.

“Our people want to be treated normal,” she said. “So I just treat them that way.” Comment on story