Jake Jones did not have much experience around individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) when he accepted a job during college as a recreation manager for an advocacy organization in South Jersey. He soon learned that treating them like any other person—and seeing beyond their disability—was the key to forming meaningful relationships.
“I realized they are extremely intelligent, they have a great sense of humor, they pay attention to what you say, they hold you accountable and they advocate for what they want,” Jones says. “You just have to be able to listen, and that helped me to break through the barriers of whatever I thought at the time, because I really wasn’t educated about folks with IDD. Once I started to bond with their humanity and let all of the other stuff fall away—things like the physical challenges they may have or the way they speak—it was so easy to work in this field.
“I was able to connect with the individuals, and I was able to learn how to do my job so much better and how to serve them better. I had no interest in doing anything else, so I put aside all my other plans and stayed in this field.”
A longtime community activist who has held leadership roles for several organizations dedicated to assisting people with disabilities, Jones is now the president and CEO of ADEPT Programs: Advocates for Development, Equity, Prosperity and Trust, which provides integrated and fully accessible living communities for the IDD population.
Angel Colon founded ADEPT in 1978 and served as executive director until 2005, when his daughter Consuelo Harris succeeded him. She led the organization until retiring in 2021 and handing the reins to Jones, who strives to see the organization’s positive influence spread throughout the state and beyond.
“We’re open to building anywhere,” he says. “ADEPT has historically been based in Burlington County, but we’re looking to take it further. We just bought our first property in Atlantic County—it’s called Project Galloway and we’re building 10 homes there. We also have plans for Mount Holly, right down the street from us, and we’re buying four affordable housing apartments in Delran.”
When completed, Project Galloway will include parks, trails, a community center and other amenities. The mission there and elsewhere is empowering individuals with IDD to live with dignity, equity and purpose, and accomplishing it takes cooperation and coordination with many community partners.
“If you build a community, you need things in the community to make it interesting, like health care services, job training, the arts, food,” Jones says. “So we partner with a lot of different organizations to make the community more embracing. It’s not just an isolated oasis for people with disabilities—it’s a model of integration and collaboration.
“We provide them with a place to live and we provide them with all the wrap-around services and care that they need. We operate around the clock: 24/7, 365 days a year, we’ve never been closed a day in 50 years.”
Still, there is much work to be done, and ADEPT wants to someday be in a position where it never has to turn away residents who have been referred to them by the New Jersey Department of Human Services.
“Our goal is to build a thousand homes, and if we do that, we’ve really done well,” Jones says.
“But honestly, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of the need for housing. So you really do need collaborative partners, and we want to do it so well that it inspires others to replicate what we’re doing, and we’re glad to help them.”
ADEPT is also eager to support families whose loved ones would benefit from an integrated living community. To that end, Jones started a weekly podcast to share information called The Greater Good Podcast, which is available on the organization’s website upon signing up for a free membership.
“It’s an opportunity for us to reach out to the general public and give them a glimpse into what a human service provider like us does—how we operate and how we think,” he says. “We have guests, we talk about operations, we talk about our projects. It’s our way of being a leader in the field, being transparent with the public and giving them an opportunity to get some other context other than the horror stories they may hear.”
ADEPT clearly continues to be a difference-maker in the field, just as it has been since its inception.
“We’ve been here for almost 50 years and my objective is to make sure we’re around for another 50,” Jones says. “We want to build a network of people who can galvanize around what we’re trying to do, so when we’re ready to move around an acquisition or if there’s an opportunity for partnership, we want to make sure that they know about us. I would like people to check us out and keep an eye on us as an up-and-coming, growing, best-in-class company.”
ADEPT Programs
Mount Holly
(609) 267-8484
ADEPTPrograms.com
