Matt Boren Continues Legacy Of Service As Cardinal Director
By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews
WARSAW — Service runs in Matt Boren’s family.
His father, the late John Boren, was Kosciusko County Jail chaplain for 17 years. His mother Patricia Boren taught at the former Warsaw Christian School.
“(I) just had those values of serving our community, of investing in people instilled in me at a young age,” he said.
It’s only natural then that Boren’s now the executive director of Cardinal Services of Indiana. He started in that role July 1.
Boren, of Warsaw, was promoted after holding multiple positions at Cardinal over about 17 years.
“But honestly when I first started here at Cardinal, it was just by chance,” he said. “I just needed a job.”
That was when he was a student at Grace College in 2001.
“I was a part-time direct support professional,” he said. “So I was working in one of the group homes, providing support for eight men and what happened is … I’m fascinated with stories and how everybody has a story and here at Cardinal you just really have an opportunity to participate in somebody’s story and to help them access their community, live their dreams, be able to achieve what they want to achieve in life and I just met people that changed my life and really found that I had a passion and a connection for seeing people of all abilities be given an opportunity to be able to be who they want to be in this world.”
He said he has a natural love for people.
“I’ve always had a big interest in just people and just how we all work together and how we interact and what makes us tick, that sort of thing so yeah, my degree even though I’m not necessarily working in psychology, working with people at all and that sort of thing helps you to be able to interact better and to support people, to understand why people do what they do,” he said.
Boren has a Bachelor of Science in counseling and a Master of Business Administration from Grace. Along with being a direct support professional at Cardinal, he’s also been a qualified disability professional, community living coordinator, KABS (Kosciusko Area Bus Service) general manager, employment services director, adult services director and executive vice president.
A supportive community like Warsaw, he said, helps organizations like Cardinal.
“I think one of the things that makes it specifically incredible in Warsaw is just this exceptional community we live in,” he said. “You can do this work and do it in an isolation and feel overwhelmed by the challenges and the needs or you can do it in a community like Warsaw and feel supported and feel like you have a sort of cooperation from places like the Kosciusko (County) Community Foundation or the K21 (Health) Foundation, United Way, all these other entities and individuals that rally, the (Kosciusko) Chamber of Commerce and just you don’t feel like you’re doing it alone.”
He said working in social services is rewarding in itself.
“Just some of the services we provide people have no idea exist until you need them,” he said. “And to be able to see families that are able to raise their children successfully or those kiddos to be able to develop the way they need to or people to not have to worry about getting the food they need or the resources they need and can focus on loving their kids instead, those are the things that just drive it home. To be able to go out in our community and to see individuals with developmental disabilities living, accessing, participating in their community right alongside of all of us is a win and I think that’s it, that’s what we exist for.”
Along with its programs for those with special needs, Cardinal also oversees the area Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Healthy Families and Head Start and runs KABS.
Though the rewards are great at Cardinal, Boren said challenges do exist. One of those has been getting enough employees.
Boren said the organization has started to pay $16 or $17 an hour, which has helped it hire more people.
Another challenge Boren pointed out is the lack of space Cardinal has on its campus for its growing needs. Part of the organization’s future plans are addressing that problem.
It originally planned to move its operations to the former Marsh building at 500 S. Buffalo St., Warsaw, but that has changed.
“Because of the pandemic and then just the increasing costs of building, it became apparent that was no longer going to be a viable option,” said Boren. “And so that’s why our board made the decision to put the building up for sale … and made the decision really to focus on our existing campus and using those donor dollars, so we’ve been reaching out to donors and to our community to inform them of our change of plans and try to drum up support for how we’ve realigned.”
The formal fundraising campaign for the renovation is to start spring 2022. Boren also shared what the project will look like.
“I think the main focus is that we’re adding some substantial space for programming,” he said. “So we’re going to be adding an opportunity lab where we’re partnering with area businesses and Ivy Tech to really be able to offer hands-on work experiences for jobs that exist in this community. We’re also going to be adding a new RedBird Art Studio area that’s got natural light and just looks out into our courtyard. We’re going to be adding a recreational area, a music and performing arts area, a culinary arts kitchen, so really focusing on creating spaces where people from the community can experience their passions and interests alongside the people we support.”
“It also includes us doing some beautification of the Jomac lot,” he added. “So we own the building across the street from us that is a dilapidated building and we’re going to beautify that and incorporate that into our campus and really want to do that in a manner that makes our community a better place and makes our neighborhood a better place.”
The organization is also working via a new partnership with Easterseals Arc of Northeast Indiana to address growing needs in the community.
That will allow Cardinal to expand its services into things “like music therapy, things like behavior consulting, structured family caregiving, different services that before we weren’t offering that now with the added resources of that Easterseals Northern Indiana network we’re able to do,” he said.
Aside from improving its operations in Kosciusko County, Cardinal also plans to expand elsewhere.
“Right now, we are renovating a home in Knox that we will be opening shortly,” Boren said. Cardinal also has an office in Rochester, which helps run its operations in Cass, Fulton and Marshall counties.
“We’re really a northern Indiana provider and we serve approximately 4,000 people in northern Indiana and we have around 400 employees doing that work,” he said.
Whatever changes Cardinal makes, its mission is to continue serving its clients.
“Our vision is to lead the way to seeing a 100% equity, inclusion and access for people that have disabilities, for families in our community and for our community at large, so really focusing on equity, inclusion and access,” he said. “It’s not well some people, or a few people, it’s a 100% of our community has that.”