By Glenn Rolfe

GEORGETOWN — Kent-Sussex Industries has expanded south, with a new Georgetown location that continues the private nonprofit’s mission to provide vocational rehabilitation service to individuals with disabilities in Kent and Sussex counties.

On March 10, KSI celebrated the opening of its Southern Campus with a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by the Greater Georgetown Chamber of Commerce.

KSI board members and other special guests joined Georgetown Mayor Bill West, council members, Greater Georgetown Chamber representatives and others in welcoming KSI to its 5 Academy Street location in a facility previously occupied by the state of Delaware.

“At one time, the state was running a day program in that location,” said KSI CEO Jayson Crouch. “There are probably 15 or 16 offices and activity rooms. They’re not that large. It had all the handicap accessibility, already laid out. They helped us to get off to a really good start.”

KSI for many years has been based in Milford, providing vocational training, employment, community integration, transportation, day habilitation, life enrichment and nutritional services in the Skill Development Center and in the community to individuals with disabilities throughout Kent and Sussex.

Program participants are referred to KSI by agencies, including the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, the Division for the Visually Impaired, the Veterans Administration and various school districts.

Like many businesses, COVID-19 greatly impacted KSI. Pre-pandemic, KSI was serving about 300 individuals. Presently, the number is about half that.

“We’ve been building back since we were able to open back up in august of 2020. I would put it north of 150 in total of all our operations right now,” Mr. Crouch said.

The job market is a hurdle in KSI’s recovery from the pandemic.

“We have about somewhere between 25 and 35 people who are ready to return,” said Mr. Crouch. “We’re like everybody else, we’re just having trouble hiring the people who would serve them. I can’t pay the wages or the sign-on bonuses and things like other for-profit companies can.”

KSI held a hiring event last week, seeking drivers and direct support professionals, also known as DSP.

“We’ve gotten a lot of interest from that, people putting in applications,” Mr. Crouch said. “For about each DSP that we add on to our staff, we can serve about an additional 10 people. Just as critical to being able to serve them whenever they get here are drivers to pick them up and get them home. So, we are looking for drivers and DSPs. But I don’t see that (need) going away anytime soon.”

The Southern Campus may draw from the Milford base.

“What the future holds for location is, I believe, that the travel time and things like that, that there be a migration of some people from the Milford facility to the Georgetown facility,” Mr. Crouch said. “So, if you live in Selbyville or Millsboro, it’s a much shorter ride to programming than coming to Milford. But we still have the staffing issue. I can’t take steps forward until I have the staff.”

KSI leases the property for the Southern Campus, which serves some individuals previously serviced by the state.

“For years, the state of Delaware, the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services, who is our main contractor for the people that we serve, they ran day programs. They had their little niche cut out, people with more intense medical issues, personal care issues, things like that,” said Mr. Crouch. “And they made a decision probably six years ago, give or take, that the state shouldn’t be delivering those services directly, and that private contractors like KSI, Easter Seals, The Chimes, Goodwill and organizations like that should be delivering those services.”

Then the pandemic hit. Mr. Crouch said the state approached KSI “about opening that program back up. We’ve worked with the state to transfer the lease, get the client list and make contact, things like that.”

“It is a little bit different population than the population I serve here (Milford), a little bit more involved. The staff to participant ratio is lower. Everybody just requires more attention. We saw it as an opportunity to move to Georgetown,” said Mr. Crouch. “When it closed, they had 22 people they were serving. When we opened back up, there were people who still had concerns about returning into a community setting. We were able to open back up with nine people. That was November 30 of 2021.”

Originally known as the Golden Opportunity Center, Inc., KSI was founded in 1962 with a grant from the Delaware Foundation Reaching Citizens with intellectual disABILITIES. It began in a small facility in Camden, just south of Dover, and grew over the next decade to include four satellite facilities.

Then, in 1985, programs based in Woodside, Bridgeville, Dover and Milford were consolidated and moved to KSI’s current 77,000-square-foot facility on North Rehoboth Boulevard in Milford.