New approach to planning making exciting opportunities possible
Ryan Rogers

Thanks to a new approach to planning at posAbilities, one individual living at the organization’s Creekside House is already taking the first steps to embarking on an exciting personal adventure in about six months’ time.

Jamie has a great passion for large machinery and movement, says senior support worker Kelly Ternes at Creekside House.

“Jamie love motions, construction sites, planes, trains anything that moves that big,” says Kelly. “We can sit for a couple hours at a construction site while the dump trucks and bulldozers are moving and he’s rocking the van because he’s so excited to watch it.”

At a planning session for Jamie, the team began brainstorming ideas around what activities they could do that match his passions.

“When we got the planning meeting together, everyone was involved, and all these ideas came up for train rides and things that move that excite him,” says Kelly, but she admits she’d never have imagined that they’d be able to arrange for him to take a plane ride.

One of Kelly’s colleagues recommended a friend who pilots a Cessna airplane who could take Jamie for a ride, and the plan is beginning to take flight.

“We need to build this up to him, get him safe and secure first,” says Kelly.

A Cessna is a smaller plane, and the team agreed it’s best to ease Jamie into the concept of liftoff, so a six-month schedule to graduate from sitting in the plane, to taxiing around the tarmac, to hopefully taking a flight has begun.

Jamie recently visited the airport and sat in the Cessna for the first time. Kelly says he was brimming with energy and excitement.

“The goal is to take flight,” says Kelly. “And if it’s not in a Cessna, because it’s quite small and you’re quite closed in, we’re thinking we’ll do a float plane where there’s more space.”

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