Traditionally, people with disabilities and high care needs were placed in institutions because community services had not been developed to address their needs. PHSS was established as a result of families wanting to have their sons and daughters living close to them.

When staff initially met with the people requiring support, they expressed their desire to live in typical homes in typical neighbourhoods and not an institutionalized setting. They wanted to be part of the community.

The very first PHSS location opened in 1988, providing supports to three women. PHSS continued to grow, creating and providing services to people on the original waiting list, and people started to move back from larger institutional settings. Around the mid-1990’s, public consensus was changing in favour of integrating people with disabilities back into the community from provincial institutions, and PHSS focused on helping to integrate people into the community. By 2008-09, the Ontario government closed its last three residential institutions for people with developmental disabilities, and nearly 1,000 people moved out of institutions with the help of community-based services like PHSS.

By adapting our supports according to the changing needs of individuals, we started to provide a different kind of support when a few individuals’ needs became more complex. Around 2014, we identified the need to support people requiring complex medical care: people considered medically fragile, including those who require long-term ventilation (LTV). With formal partnerships with local hospitals and support from the ministry, this resulted in young adults moving out of hospitals and into their own homes and communities.

Since 2016, we have continued to innovate and expand to respond to the needs of people we support and families:

• Opened a brand new accessible two-level community space (Community Place North);
• Rebranded from Participation House Support Services to PHSS;
• Expanded provincially beyond the London area into Owen Sound and Ottawa;
• Created an intentional supportive community with a new 14-unit apartment building;
• Started a new family-directed, PHSS-managed family supports program;
• Formed an Integrative Partnership with DeafBlind Ontario Services and Community Living Chatham-Kent

PHSS continues to adapt to changing needs and expand across the region and is proud to support people in a variety of settings, all of which are called “home” and “community”.