Columbia Down Syndrome group expanding, hosting town hall Saturday
More services for people with Down Syndrome could soon be coming to Columbia.
On Saturday, the Down Syndrome Guild of Greater Kansas City will host a town hall at the Children’s Therapy Center at 525 N. Keene Street.
The Kansas City guild is coming to Columbia to discuss expanding its services in the area. More than a decade ago, three Mid-Missouri moms started their own group to in an effort to share resources and create a community.
“We didn’t have anybody that we could ask questions of because we didn’t know any other families,” Kate Basi, a mother of an 11-year-old daughter with Down Syndrome and one of the founders of the group, said. “The three of us started a group to try to provide that networking to families. We were very careful not to call ourselves a support group because, it wasn’t a matter of people wanting to sit around and wail about how difficult their life was, this was meant to be friends and to create a community, and that’s sort of what we’ve been trying to do for the last few years. But, it’s hard, it’s a huge geographic area.”
“We have been impressed with the grass-roots effort that was started more than a decade ago by three moms in the Columbia area,” Amy Allison, chief operating officer, KCDSG, said. “While they have done a tremendous job of offering support to families receiving a diagnosis that their baby has Down syndrome, we feel we can augment the support services provided to the entire mid-Missouri region. Our goal is to hire a program coordinator who can dedicate their time to serving families in this area.”
Officials with the Down Syndrome Guild of Kansas City have identified 75 families in the area. In 2015, 5.4 million people across the globe had Down Syndrome.
