Unlocking the soul of Matheny: Enhancing lives for individuals with medically complex developmental disabilities
August 20, 2024
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Despite great strides by the Americans with Disabilities Act, holistic care, education and inclusion remain elusive for those with medically complex developmental disabilities. Matheny is dedicated to addressing this issue, providing coordinated services to enhance the quality of life for these individuals.
Matheny’s founders, Walter and Marguerite Matheny, were more than problem solvers, they were visionaries. As parents to a son born with cerebral palsy, they discovered a world that was ill-equipped to respond to the physical, educational and medical needs of children with complex disabilities. So, in 1946 they established the Matheny School as a first step toward creating a place that provided the care and community their son — and other children like him — needed.
When the Matheny School moved into its first building nearly eight years later, programming focused on special physical education, academics, speech therapy and recreation. As news of the school spread, enrollment increased and the Mathenys pursued an expanded mission to not only educate its students but also provide the specialized medical care they needed all in one place. As a result, Matheny School was designated as a special hospital by the New Jersey State Department of Health in the 1970s, beginning a new chapter for the life-changing facility.
Today, Matheny Medical and Educational Center (Matheny) is an extraordinary organization upholding the compassion and care the Mathenys envisioned. Still occupying the main facility constructed in 1954 on a picturesque hillside in Peapack, NJ, Matheny has expanded to encompass a school for students aged 3-21, an outpatient center catering to individuals with diverse disabilities, and residences and group homes providing essential long-term care. CannonDesign is honored to partner with Matheny’s leaders as they map the course to continued growth.
While many Matheny residents have cerebral palsy as their primary diagnosis, its patients have an array of complex disorders, each warranting specialized care and understanding. That’s what makes Matheny so much more than a hospital and a school. Matheny has become a home and a community of people working together to realize life’s greatest opportunities despite complex challenges. Simply put, what happens at Matheny is magic.
Testimonials
A deeply collaborative staff network — including healthcare professionals, educators, therapists, direct service providers and administrators — create an environment that helps people with disabilities live full lives with the care and dignity they deserve. It’s incredibly challenging work, and they achieve astounding results; however, redesigned and updated physical spaces would significantly enhance work and life experiences for patients, caregivers and family members.
That’s where we’ve joined forces. Recognizing the opportunity for improvement, Matheny partnered with CannonDesign to establish plans for a new main facility and first-of-their kind group home standards. Experts from our education and health practices, along with our Open Hand Studio team, have collaborated to help Matheny map a course for care over the next generation.
Matheny’s master plan and new facility
After more than 75 years of growing and thriving in its current location, external pressures are forcing Matheny to relocate, providing an opportunity to reimagine its environment.
The vision for the master plan was to define the program and site of a new facility — common goals of a master plan for a school or healthcare facility. But nothing about this project was common. It required our team to stretch beyond “best practice” to truly learn about the complex needs of the people Matheny serves. The deep collaboration and humility between our health and education teams was critical from the project's start to completion.
Colleagues in our education practice first talked about soul. I usually have a good understanding of the problems any hospital wants to solve, so I will quickly collect data (e.g., volume, utilization, types of procedures, lengths of stay, etc.) as part of the initial line of inquiry. But Matheny was different. None of us fully understood its complexity on our first visit to the facility. It was overwhelming. Data could not be our first line of inquiry. Our education team’s approach was to first uncover the soul and culture of Matheny.
James Case, AIA, LEED AP, Healthcare design
Inclusive visioning sessions involving Matheny residents, administrators, parents, teachers and clinicians helped our teams understand the organization’s challenges, major problems and motivators for their staff and leadership. That insight informed preliminary testing of key spaces and planning approaches, requiring our team to lean in to cross-market expertise to develop a plan that would benefit each part of Matheny’s main campus operations.
Our healthcare team understood the dot-connecting — healthcare regulations, equipment, patient movement and logistics, and patient and staff experience. They led our out-of-the-box thinking to drive a successful process that included leveraging connections to socialize the project with the New Jersey Department of Health, the Department of Community Affairs and others to achieve approvals and funding.
Frances Fox, AIA, Education design
The master plan incorporates a site selection and program that balances Matheny's current needs with growth potential and intentional community engagement. It was designed to create a home-like and accessible environment with strong connections to the outdoors and integrated technology that will improve overall quality of life and care. As the organization continues to amass public support and funding to execute the master plan, CannonDesign produced and gifted a video (embedded above) to amplify the impact of Matheny magic.
Group Home Community Residence Design Guidelines
Matheny's group homes play a central role in its care model, offering 24-hour assisted living with medical supervision in residential settings within the community. Within these homes, residents form a close-knit and supportive community.
Currently, its homes are modified standard single-family residences or new purpose-built group residences — all designed and constructed by builders who didn’t have a deep understanding of the unique needs of the people who would call them home. It's crucial to recognize that individuals facing complex disabilities, particularly those with cerebral palsy, often confront substantial challenges in achieving independence.
To push the boundaries of what Matheny’s group homes can achieve, CannonDesign’s Open Hand Studio — our firm’s incubator for public interest design — provided pro-bono services to create design guidelines for Matheny’s future group homes specifically tailored for people with cerebral palsy and related disorders.
These guidelines focus on four overarching goals:
- Creating a Home-like Atmosphere: Transforming facilities into nurturing homes, minimizing institutional features while upholding high standards of care and safety.
- Prioritizing Accessibility & Adaptability: Providing residents with access to all "front-of-house" spaces in their home, with guidelines emphasizing barrier-free access to accommodate a range of abilities, both current and future.
- Ensuring Safety: Planning and design strategies that ensure the safety of residents and staff, including thoughtful consideration of egress paths and the placement of lifts and equipment.
- Enhancing Operational Efficiency: Guidelines that promote efficient planning and space adjacencies to maximize functionality and support streamlined care operations.
As we scale this project, we envision a future where these guidelines become the gold standard for designing residences for individuals with cerebral palsy and related disorders.
Since its inception Matheny has been dedicated to helping individuals with complex disabilities live full lives. Through the school, hospital, group homes, day programs and Arts Access program, Matheny has created a network of care and support that stands out from organizations with a similar mission. As designers, we believe the unique and pioneering nature of our work with Matheny underscores the power of design to help all people flourish. We are proud to partner with such a remarkable organization as they create a long-term plan to better serve the individuals in their care while inspiring positive change on a broader scale.
