Tennessee Family Solutions Inc.
DONATE NOW
615-255-8870
Share page
831 Seven Oaks Blvd
Smyrna, TN 37167
Organization Details

Statements

Mission

The mission of Tennessee Family Solutions, Inc. (TFS) is to help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities lead safe, stable and personally fulfilling lifestyles in Middle Tennessee communities. In doing so, we seek to maximize community integration.

Background

TFS seeks to provide fully community integrated residential and day service settings for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We have implemented the positive behavior centered Teaching-Family Model of care as well as medical and psychiatric clinics in order to accommodate individuals who might have a dual diagnosis. We have been a certified Teaching Family Model provider since 2011. We are a member and actively involved with the International Teaching Family Association. (www.teaching-family.org). We seek to provide services for individuals whose medical or behavioral needs might otherwise require an institutional service setting. We currently operate homes in both Davidson and Rutherford counties. We also have some adult foster care settings in outlying Middle Tennessee counties. We are an agency started by families with disabled family members. Our methods are meant to address deficiencies we saw in other residential settings we have experienced over a life time of care for our family members with special needs.

Impact

2023
1. TFS obtained a behavioral health license in 2020 from the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and opened a
psychiatric clinic dedicated to mental health services for adults with ID/DD. The practitioners are affiliated with Trustpoint Hospital in Murfreesboro. While we have operated a mental health
clinic in the past for individuals we serve in our residential program, the intent of this project is to offer services to adults with ID/DD outside of TFS.
2. TFS expanded services in our Specialty Medical Health clinic in 2023. The patient population more than doubled in 2023. Again, the target population is adults with ID/DD.
3. TFS continues to provide residential and day services for individuals with intellectual disabilities in Davidson and Rutherford Counties.

Needs

1. TFS will continue seeking financial support for maintenance and expansion of our Specialty Medical Clinic and Mental Health Specialty Clinic.
2. As an agency, we are seeking development as a non-profit beyond a reliance on state funded operational revenue alone as our primary source of income. The agency must now seek
to stabilize operations and obtain other sources of support. This means finding community support for grant writing, fund raising and promoting a community awareness
of the resources we offer.
3. We actively solicit donations to a Special Needs fund that supplies a means of purchasing furniture, clothing and medical needs for the individuals coming into the
program.

CEO Statement

Tennessee Family Solutions, Inc. from our inception has sought to serve individuals with severe medical needs in a home like setting. We determined to serve adults with ID/DD and medical fragility successfully while maintaining a non-institutional environment. Our orientation is the community. We opened our first Medical Residential home in Murfreesboro in March 2008. The Medical Residential home is a 24 hour a day nursing facility capable of providing residential services to medically fragile persons with intellectual disabilities.

We continue to implement a behavioral model of care, the Teaching-Family Model, to serve those with serious behavioral issues. Over 1/2 of the individuals we serve are dual diagnosed. This means that their challenges go beyond a permanent Intellectual Disability to include Mental Illness. I think it is a given that Tennesseans want services for this population of individuals and their families who have rather desperate needs. The change in the last 20 years is the resource network for services. Once services to the severely disabled were provided primarily by State government. Today, this population receives their services from private agencies who are somewhat dependent on private funding in order to succeed.

Board Chair Statement

TFS has grown rapidly in our 20+ years of existence. The handful of families who transitioned with me from the Parent-Guardian Association of Clover Bottom Developmental Center to the development of a community non-profit provider capable of meeting the needs of our children and others like them, all understood the risks of failure. We had experiences with community placements before and most of them were bad. Clover Bottom was a safe haven for us when community providers were overwhelmed by the requirements of our children's severe disabilities. When the need required it, I stepped in as Executive Director and remained Board President to assure that the functions of both positions were met while we grew. In some ways TFS has become everything we hoped it could be; in other ways we realize how far we have yet to go. Achieving the Mission of an agency like TFS requires finding others, parents, relatives or just sympathetic citizens, who can take up the Mission and carry it forward. As parents, those of us who started the agency were determined to achieve what we set out to do. We desired to have an agency that would always be responsive to the families it served, in addition to the special people the families had entrusted to our care. Our challenge for the future, both immediate and long-term, is to cultivate board members and community supporters who will champion the Mission of the agency.


Service Categories

Primary Category: Human Services  - Developmentally Disabled Services/Centers 
Secondary Category: Mental Health & Crisis Intervention  - Residential Mental Health Treatment 
Tertiary Category: Mental Health & Crisis Intervention  - Mental Health Treatment 

Areas Served

1. In Davidson County we operate homes in the Hermitage/Donelson area.
2. In Rutherford County we operate homes in Murfreesboro and Smyrna.

TN - Davidson
TN - Rutherford