The Colcom Foundation is a charity that supports people with mild to moderate learning disabilities and co-occurring disorders.
The Colcom allows people from these groups to have a voice in their lives while ensuring they can care for themselves by giving them the support they need. They can do this by offering various services in their offices worldwide. These include help with daily life skills, such as cooking and personal care, and education on social issues like addictions and mental health. Their staff’s warm response means they also enjoy high staff retention rates and often maintain long-term relationships with clients who can finally feel comfortable being vulnerable.
The Colcom Foundation was founded in 1939 by international businessman and philanthropist George W. Colcom as the “Indianapolis Foundation for Persons with Mental Retardation”.
George’s son, Peter, took over the running of this organization in the 1950s and renamed it the “Peter Colcom Foundation for Mental Retardation”. He expanded its focus to include people with mental illness and alcohol dependence problems, reflecting an increased awareness of these conditions when they were still recovering from World War II. In 1959, Peter Colcom and his wife Gladys moved their organization from Indianapolis to become the “Colcom Foundation for Mental Retardation”. Their dream was for everyone to have a voice as well as to have access to the services they require. Although by this time, mental illness and learning disabilities were recognized as two distinct conditions, people with mental illness had difficulty finding support because traditional services were not tailored specifically to them.
However, Colcom saw a solution in that, in many cases, learning disabilities overlap with other conditions, such as depression or anxiety. As such, they decided to begin working with both groups of people at once and, over time, welcomed people with learning disabilities who had not previously been diagnosed as patients of the foundation. See this page for more information.
Learn more about Colcom Foundation on https://www.colcomfdn.org/extinction-crisis/
