Life Styles Connects Clients with Jobs, Independence

Carol Hart
Founder, Life Styles Inc.

Fayetteville

My husband and I went to college in Texas and came to Arkansas in 1970 to visit my brother. We were looking for a place to settle down and we really liked the area.

The first job I had here was at the Richardson Center when it was in the basement of a Presbyterian church. They had a half-day program for children with developmental disabilities and I just fell in love with the kids.

These families often ran into difficulties because when the kids became young adults, some of them couldn’t stay home anymore, and there weren’t services in the area to help them get jobs or learn the life skills they need.

Life Styles began in 1976 as a transitional housing program. Our mission now is to help people with developmental disabilities get jobs and the education they need to live as independently as possible.

We work on making the right decisions, being a good neighbor, managing money – all the things so many of us take for granted and learn as we grow up. We’ve found clients jobs at restaurants, the university, Tyson offices, and we also have a paper-shredding business.

Our budget is $3 million a year, with most coming from Medicaid. Benefits like Polo in the Ozarks also raise money for Life Styles. That event brought in $95,000 last year, and we hope to top $100,000 this September.

Services are tailored to the needs of our clients. We have about 96 employees at our college for living, employment department and supportive services divisions.

Over the years, we’ve worked with 350 or more people. Right now, we serve about 130 people, but that will double when we open our new location. We purchased some land catty-cornered to our offices and will be building a new facility.

We have initiated a capital campaign to pay for the expansion, and have a challenge grant from the Walker Family for $500,000.

– Interviewed by Robert Bell