As 2025 ends, we wanted to share some of the positive outcomes achieved in New York this year, to share details of our 2025 OPWDD Targeted Inflationary Increase, and to THANK YOU for being a part of a successful year!

• New York Family Day: Our first family open house in October was the best attended event for NY families to date and was filled with compliments and gratitude for the NY programs! Families got to meet staff and see programs in action, with hands-on demonstrations of some of our enhanced enrichment programming.
• New Westchester County Group Home: We made progress, getting through a few more critical steps on the state approval process towards our Somerstown Road project, which, if we get our plan approved, we think may be the first digitally printed group home in the country— Stay tuned for more!
• Fundraising & Community Engagement Growth: The growing success of our New York Tennis & Pickleball Fundraiser has been steady enough to commit to our very first, stand-alone New York Golf, Tennis and Pickleball Tournament, adding our first golf outing to the event for 2026! We hope you’ll join us on September 23rd at Brae Burn Country Club and tell your friends!
• Celebrating with the Commissioner:  OPWDD Commissioner Willow Baer attended our E-Badge Academy and Pathways Graduation in August and congratulated us on our award-winning Pathways Programs and new offerings of Clinical Care & Wellness which were added to ensure ever-expanding growth opportunities for Team Ability. Commissioner Baer also visited the Howland IRA located in Beacon NY, and was impressed with our residential, day program and nursing services.
• Jane’s Favorite: The significant one-time retention payments, retro payments and wage increases made earlier this year–on average 19% increases, and every NY Team member received something–helped us achieve the lowest vacancy rate in our NY programs ever!!
• Engaging NY Legislators:  We’re looking forward to hosting a NY Legislative Breakfast in January 2026 to share success, updates and issues with our local, regional and state legislators, so more to come on our advocacy efforts!
• OPWDD 2025 Inflationary Increase:  We do want to let you know that the 2.6% 4/1/25 OPWDD Targeted Inflationary Increase we received is currently being used to offset significant inflation increases in non-salary costs, including insurance, supplies, maintenance, equipment and property costs.  We’ll keep assessing as we go and are always advocating to do the very best for our team, not just in wages but in opportunity, growth and support.  We hope we can count on you to support Ability Beyond in the years ahead and thank you for your support.

Wishing you a wonderful Holiday Season and a very Happy New Year!

Cheers!