LifeScape

Our Mission is empowering people to live their best life.

LifeScape provides a broad range of services, supports, and expertise to help children and youth with mild to significant disabilities reach their fullest potential in all aspects of their lives. We have helped thousands of children and adults recover function, make gains, and find hope. We are diligently working to find ways to provide an opportunity for those living with an intellectual and development disability to work in the community. So many of our folks have expressed a desire and willingness to work in the community and to contribute to the economy, but they continue to experience significant barriers to finding employment. Pathways to Life Specialty School students are given opportunities to participate in volunteering experiences and hands on training to prepare them for either joining the workforce, securing a permanent volunteer job or both! 

We know that employment is the most direct method to empower individuals living with a disability to achieve independence, economic self-sufficiency, and self-worth. Our goal is to implement the use of Avail enabling technology which empowers those living with intellectual disabilities to gain and maintain employment. This technology equips job coaches and learners with pre-created content and the ability to create step-by-step systematic digital prompts of any skill, activity or coping mechanism.  Pathways to Life Specialty School has a comprehensive job coaching program to promote students’ acquisition of skills to allow them to develop the necessary skills to secure and maintain a job.     

Where our Journey Began    

Over the past seven decades countless good people have come together to create LifeScape. Ours is a story of bold leaders who were moved by compassion to improve life for those with disabilities and specialized healthcare needs. Established in 2014, LifeScape is an independent, non-profit organization committed to empowering children and adults with complex care needs to lead fulfilling lives. We currently serve over 4,000 individuals in nearly every county of South Dakota. We came to be through the merger of Children's Care Hospital & School and South Dakota Achieve. In Sioux Falls, LifeScape uniquely combines expertise in the care of children and the support of adults. In Rapid City, LifeScape provides therapy and behavioral services for children on an outpatient and outreach basis.

LifeScape is the only organization of its kind in South Dakota to provide services for people throughout their lifespan. We are known for finding innovative solutions for a greater quality of life - when no one else can.

Meet People on the Journey

Christian (Rapid City): "LifeScape has given me back my son."

Before age three, Christian was not developing normally. He was diagnosed with autism at seven years old. He had difficulty expressing emotion and coping with sensory stressors. His behavior deteriorated during puberty, becoming aggressive - hitting, kicking, throwing things - but right after, he knew what he'd done and would break down in remorse. 

When his episodes worsened to the point his mother could no longer care for him on her own, Christian came to LifeScape. Although far from his Rapid City home, LifeScape in Sioux Falls was the only place Christian could receive comprehensive education, therapy, and residential services.

LifeScape has helped Christian learn to cope by giving him a safe and friendly place to live. He has goals now. He is kind-hearted and dreams of becoming a police officer someday. In a year at LifeScape, Christian has made great strides. His mom, Kari, shared that the two of them went for a hike in the Black Hills recently. She said, "This hike I will remember forever. My son and I walked, we joked, we laughed. When we made it to the top, I realized that this hike represented Christian's great progress. We owe his success to the amazing team at LifeScape . LifeScape has given me back my son, I will forever be grateful."

Your generous support will:

1. Grow our capacity to educate children with challenging disabilities and behaviors without compromising the educational experience of other learners.
2. Provide "smart" classrooms equipped with the latest adaptive technologies that will enable those we serve to truly engage in learning.
3. Allow us to perform more behavioral evaluations and teach employment tasks and independence in the workforce.
4. Train, identify and directly connect employers with qualified job seekers living with disabilities.
5. Place individuals living with intellectual and developmental disabilities into jobs in the community.