Now back to work.

As of 1990, the SCDD interdisciplinary team included sixty-four faculty and technical staff, representing 14 academic disciplines from the University of Rochester and seven other higher learning institutions in upstate New York. Consumer services were provided to 1,585 people in that year, 5,434 community-based personnel received outreach training sponsored by SCDD, and faculty and students published a total of 23 peer-reviewed papers or chapters. The 1990 income was $1,685,707. Over the next 15 years, the income would increase to over $5 million due to growth in research programs, new training initiatives, and the expansion of clinical services.

Further growth of SCDD was linked to developing discretionary funding. For its first 15 years, SCDD funding was limited to grants and contracts for specific programs; income from clinical services rarely reached a break-even point. In the mid 1990s the Department of Pediatrics designated the emerging program in Autism Spectrum Disorders as one of its strategic targets for growth, which freed discretionary funding for new faculty positions. Beginning in the late 1990s several recruitments took place that brought new key personnel to SCDD's faculty. There was also an effort to raise the level of gift and bequeathal funding specific to IDD. Several key gifts were received, including multiyear funding from the Andrew J. Kirch Charitable Trust and gifts from individual donors.

By 1990 long-range plans for SCDD reflected emergent major themes, largely guided by UCEDD federal requirements. Growth after 1990 was driven by the changing landscape for research and clinical funding regionally, nationally, and internationally. Deinstitutionalization had been nearly completed, at least in New York State. Large aggregate care settings were replaced with community- based small group or individual residential alternatives. The shift from a focus on only children to a concern for age-span services and supports in SCDD was now complete. The SCDD training program had matured sufficiently to support more ambitious initiatives both within the UR and in the community. Service and training also were impacted dramatically by the appearance of larger and larger numbers of consumers with suspected Autism Spectrum Disorders. Recruitment of new faculty with help from the Department of Pediatrics Strategic Plan funds, in turn brought a much larger focus on research.