Our community has come along way since 1851, when the village of Huntley was founded. The village itself has grown both in population and successes. This is partly because of the many opportunities found here, but also because of our ability to help others despite our differences. This is the spirit of Virtual Transition Night.

Not everybody is born with the same advantages. Some of us have ADHD or suffer from extreme anxiety. Some of us are born with Asperger’s Syndrome or Autism. Either way, life is harder for some of our loved ones. This year’s Virtual Transition Night helped to fix this.

Virtual Transition Night was hosted on a zoom call with many guest speakers present. Among those speakers was Robert Farley, a legal representative to those with disabilities and their families. He explained how students and graduates who have a disability may be entitled to funds to help support them and their family.

“Those with an IQ of 70 or less may be eligible to state funding” said Farley.

This funding is crucial for families to support their children. Because of their disabilities, parents may spend a lot of money on treatments to help their child. Without state funding, they have to work extra hard to provide for their family and may struggle to do so. That is why Mr. Farley’s work is so important to many families in our community.

Also at the meeting was Denise Kaplan, a representative from Rivkin and Rivkin, an estate planning Limited Liability Company (LLC). She went over private first-party trusts that families can get access to in order to receive the funding they need, as well as certain benefits. 

“The ones we’re gonna focus on are the ones are for those that need means-tested benefits, and those benefits are, on the income side, what [Robert Farley] mentioned, the Supplemental Security Income, called SSI for short,” said Kaplan.

Means-tested benefits are benefits for those who can prove that their income is not enough to meet a specified limit and cannot reliably provide for their families. In other words, Mrs. Kaplan helps families get the funding they need to provide for their families. Robert Farley does the same. These two individuals have done so much for so many families in our community, and we are lucky to have them here to help us.

Many other people showed up to the Zoom meeting; people interested in what help they can get for their children and people interested in what Virtual Transition Night was all about. The fact that tonight’s meeting was not very widely advertised, but still how so many attended really shows how much our community cares for all of us. Just because we are all born different does not mean we should treat other people differently. We all have to be there for each other, especially in these difficult times.