By GREGORY ZELLER //
A new umbrella has opened over 4,000 regional employees servicing developmentally and physically disabled Long Islanders.
Pronounced “connection,” Kinexion – which officially launched Tuesday in Woodbury – will organize an existing family of seven affiliate organizations that collectively assist more than 10,000 Long Island clients.
The seven not-for-profit organizations include Manorville-based Independent Group Home Living, Yaphank’s New Interdisciplinary School, Hauppauge’s Angela’s House and Port Jefferson Station-based Maryhaven.
Also in the fold: the Hauppauge-based Head Injury Association, Riverhead-based East End Disability Associates and Woodbury’s Center for Developmental Disabilities.
Kinexion will oversee day-to-day operations of the seven groups, which specialize in residential and educational services, vocational training, therapeutic programs and more supportive efforts for the intellectually and physically disabled community, medically frail children and people living with traumatic brain injury.
Kerri Neifeld: Effective advancement.
It’s a wide breadth of services, yet intimately related. The big-picture plan sees Management Service Organization Kinexion providing “shared departments to support finance, information technology, human resources, corporate compliance, purchasing, maintenance and logistics,” according to the nonprofit, while the member organizations focus on lifetime care that enhances the purpose and wellbeing of people with disabilities and their families.
The networking will provide copious opportunities to “learn new things about providing the best services we can for the people that we serve,” noted Kinexion Chief Executive Officer Walter Stockton, who was previously IGHL’s president and CEO.
And of course, there’s also the potential for significant cost efficiencies up and down the line, Stockton added.
“By being part of a large organization, our agencies get to participate in sharing in costs and saving money,” the CEO said. “We also like to think that by combining back-office staff, since we all need to have back-office staffs, that we could save that money and put that back into our programs that are so very important to the people that we serve.”
Connecting through Kinexion is indeed a win-win for the busy member organizations, which can leave the day-to-day to the mothership, collaborate on innovative programming and otherwise focus on the residents, patients and clients in their care.
Kerri Neifeld, commissioner of the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, called the Woodbury startup “a terrific advancement in the effort to provide accessible and effective services for the disabled community on Long Island.”
Neifeld also applauded the plan to provide these services “on a more effective scale.”
“Our neighbors with special needs deserve the best possible care, which these affiliates have always provided and will continue to provide,” the commissioner said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our work with Kinexion and its affiliates for years to come.”
