Easterseals Bluegrass’ newly renovated facility at 1900 Richmond Road provides a convenient location for families to access services as well as expanded and accessible spaces inside and out.
Just over 100 years ago, the organization that would become Easterseals Bluegrass started in Lexington. Now, in a new building, the organization is ready to impact the lives of children and adults in Central Kentucky for years to come.
In March, Easterseals moved into its new facility at 1900 Richmond Road, the former longtime location of Shriners Hospitals for Children. The facility, renovated and redesigned with its clients in mind, covers about 170,000 square feet on more than 28 acres of property. Easterseals takes up about 75,000 square feet, Jamie Ellis, Easterseals Bluegrass executive director, said. The new facility provides the organization with the space and equipment to offer more services to the Central Kentucky community.
Jamie Ellis
“This started with the idea of us being able to go to a place that was accessible for children, not only in Lexington but in other counties as well,” Ellis said. “Here, we’re close off the interstate, and we have a space where we can grow services and really have accessible space for the people that we serve.”
On September 27, 1923, the Kentucky Society for Crippled Children (KSCC) started in Lexington, modeled and inspired by the National Society for Crippled Children started by Edgar Allen of Elyria, Ohio. Allen had lost his son after a streetcar accident in 1907. The lack of adequate medical services to save his son prompted the businessman to build a hospital. Once it was complete, he was surprised to learn that children with disabilities not only lacked adequate medical help but were often hidden from view. The revelation spurred the founding of his society.
In the 1940s, a polio epidemic prompted many concerned citizens in Central Kentucky to build a hospital to help polio victims, especially children. With the help of several other organizations, the KSCC was able to raise the funds and build a hospital that opened in 1950. That hospital, the Convalescent Home for Crippled Children, eventually became Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital. A name change came for KCSS as well. Aligning itself with the overwhelming public support for a long-running Easter “seals” campaign, which raised funds for the organization, the KCSS became the Kentucky Easter Seals Society.
For 65 years, KESS operated the inpatient rehabilitation hospital at Cardinal Hill while adding other inpatient programs and services as needed. Typical of services available at other Easterseals affiliates across the country, Kentucky Easter Seals Society provided services that closed the gaps in medical and rehabilitation services its clients typically weren’t able to cover.
However, in 2015, changes in the healthcare system saw KESS transferring the hospital to a larger inpatient hospital provider and turned its attention to services for children and adults with needs outside of a hospital setting. Originally, the organization continued to operate at the Cardinal Hill location, but it became apparent, Ellis said, that a larger facility was needed.
KESS became Easterseals Bluegrass and purchased the Richmond Road building in 2020, Ellis said. The new building gave it more space to provide services, including a day health program for adults with disabilities and/or significant health issues, outpatient pediatric therapy services, adaptive recreation, and a specialized summer program for children with special healthcare needs. Renovation began in 2021 and was completed this spring, with a ribbon-cutting held this March.
Purchasing the building and renovating it gave the organization the ability to ensure it met the needs of its clients, Ellis said. “We would literally stand in a room and think about certain clients that we had and say, ‘OK, I’m John. How am I going to be able to get to the bathroom from here?’” Ellis said. “We took our time with making sure we picked the right thing for the people that we serve… Our board was extremely supportive of saying, ‘If it’s good for the people we serve, then that’s what we do.’”
Easterseals board member Richard Sturgill said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony that this was part of the organization’s mission. “Today, we celebrate not only a new beginning but also a remarkable milestone in our organization’s history,” Sturgill said. “It is our mission to champion people of all ages, ensuring that everyone, regardless of ability or life challenge, has the opportunity to live, learn, work, and play in our community.”
Now, Ellis said, the program operates its Creative Beginnings Child Development Center, pediatric outpatient therapy, adaptive recreation, and adult day health, but there are plans to incorporate more programs. Soon, the facility will offer a Prescribed Pediatric Extended Care program that provides five-day-a-week child care for children with complex healthcare needs, she said.
“This program is set up with nursing oversight so that the child can go to a day program like any other 3-year-old could go to a daycare,” she said. “They can go to this program and still participate in educational activities but have that nurse oversight to make sure that the child stays safe and is cared for properly so that the parent can keep working.”
The larger facility also provided Easterseals with the ability to partner with University of Kentucky Healthcare’s Kentucky Children’s Hospital. UK leases a portion of the space from Easterseals, Ellis said, and provides services for children who require complex medical and developmental care as part of their Children’s Hospital Complex Care Clinic, Developmental Pediatrics Clinic, and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Graduate Clinic.
“The cool thing is we often serve the same children, so a lot of the children who are going to their clinics also come to our outpatient therapy clinic,” Ellis said. “Now these families have one location to get services instead of having to navigate through different parking lots and different places throughout Lexington.”
So far, she said, clients have loved the new facility. “They’re excited, especially the adult day health family,” she said. “We went from a really small space to having accessible space for their families to be in during the day… And they have access to a beautiful outdoor space that they and their families can enjoy. We have a brand-new wheelchair-accessible playground that our child care can use, and now they can do activities on that beautiful green space. It’s just gorgeous out there. Every program got more space and new equipment. We’ve had nothing but great responses from family.”