Easter Seals Disability Services

Easter Seals Announces Merger
with the Waukesha Training Center
The Leadership of Easter Seals Southeast Wisconsin and Waukesha Training Center is pleased to announce the merger of two agencies with over a century of service experience.  The joining of these two service agencies will provide a stable foundation for further expansion of current services and provide a springboard for new services. It will further enable us to meet the needs, hopes and dreams of children and adults with disabilities, as we work to make our vision a reality to create a world where the people we serve have opportunities to live, learn, work and play in their communities

The combined organization will touch the lives of nearly 10,000 children and adults with disabilities in Southeast Wisconsin.  The combined agency budgets will double Easter Seals from a four to an eight million dollar disability service provider and have over 170 employees in Milwaukee, Waukesha and Kenosha counties.  This alliance will add work training and employment programs to the current array of services that Easter Seals provides for individuals throughout a lifespan. 

“This is a merger, with a broad vision for the future, is about expanding and redefining services to create opportunities for the people we serve to have more independent lives. It is about providing more opportunities to our area,“ says Bob Glowacki, CEO Easter Seals Southeast WI.

The Easter Seals, Waukesha site will continue to provide employment to the current 300 participants.  “As our leadership and staff explored the resources required to accomplish our two agency initiatives: expand our reach geographically and offer more community based work opportunities.  We discovered that a merger with Easter Seals provides a stronger foundation on which to grow and sustain our services in addition to increasing our community impact,” says, Angie Brunhart, Executive Director, Waukesha Training Center.

• Continue its focus on serving children and adults with disabilities, predominantly developmental disabilities.  It will also expand our mission to touch the lives of those who are economically and socially disengaged based on limited access to community resources.
• http://www.waukeshatrainingcenter.com/Further strengthen the commitment to serve the life spectrum from early childhood to adulthood to older adults by sharing program knowledge.  Easter Seals will be able to offer greater work opportunities in adult day and WTC will use our Adult Day model to expand programs to transition aging participants looking for more social and recreational services.
• Launch new programs that will expand services using the diverse competencies both agencies possess as well as tapping into National Easter Seals resources in veteran’s services, work training for older adults and contemporary work transition models. 

This will be the second merger in five years for Easter Seals Southeast Wisconsin, under Robert Glowacki’s leadership.  In 2004, Easter Seals merged with Kindcare.  Easter Seals is celebrating 75 years of service this year.  Its success and growth, even during these trying economic times, is attributed to its quality services and mission driven staff. “As we approached our 75th year, our agency’s leadership, board and staff alike, were not focusing on celebrating our past achievements , but looking forward to our future, The completion of this merger is a testament  to our continuing effort to be a responsive, forward-thinking service agency,” says Easter Seals Board Chair, Melissa Koeppel.

An event will be held on October 6th from 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. to publicly announcement the merger at the Marcus Majestic Cinema in Waukesha.  For your reservation at this exciting announcement, please contact Susan Hallenbeck at 414-449-444 x254

For more information visit http://www.eastersealswise.com/ or http://www.waukeshatrainingcenter.com/.