Our Story
Ability Training Services (ATS) grew from a simple belief: people with intellectual and developmental disabilities deserve meaningful opportunities to learn, work, build relationships, and participate fully in their communities.
Founder Danya Ochoa began working in Special Education in 2007 and was later introduced to services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She quickly recognized both the need for strong community-based supports and the difference those supports could make when they were truly individualized. After working independently with adults with I/DD in their homes and communities, Danya founded Ability Training Services to bring that approach to more Oregonians.
Growing Community-Based Services
Since 2014, ATS has supported individuals with I/DD in developing greater independence, communication, health and wellness, safety, employment skills, relationships, and community connections.
Some of ATS's earliest programs were built around semi-structured social learning, including health and wellness classes, communication groups, money-handling instruction, retreats, community exploration, and the Experience series. These programs helped shape an approach that continues to influence ATS today: learning happens best when people have meaningful opportunities to practice skills in real life.
Person-centered thinking, positive behavior supports, trauma-informed practices, self-determination, and respect for individual choice remain central to how ATS approaches services.
Expanding Into Employment Services
In 2016, ATS expanded its work after recognizing another significant need: helping people with I/DD obtain meaningful, competitive, integrated employment.
ATS began working with Vocational Rehabilitation and Oregon's developmental disability system to support individuals through employment discovery, job development, job placement, and ongoing job coaching. Employment services became another way for ATS to pursue the same mission that started the agency: helping people build greater independence and meaningful roles within their communities.
Becoming an Oregon Medicaid Agency
As ATS grew, so did its responsibilities.
ATS developed as a Oregon Medicaid Agency, moving from only providing services within Oregon's I/DD system to mentorship and leadership roles. Operating within Oregon's highly regulated provider system gave ATS firsthand experience with the challenges agencies face trying to translate rules, Individual Support Plans, service requirements, and regulatory expectations into systems that actually work in everyday operations.
That experience eventually created the foundation for the next chapter of ATS.
From Provider Experience to Consulting
After years of building, operating, troubleshooting, and improving its own systems, ATS began helping other provider organizations do the same.
Today, ATS Consulting works with provider agencies and prospective agency owners on areas such as agency development, Medicaid agency certification and endorsement preparation, policies and procedures, Plans of Correction, regulatory compliance, documentation systems, Individual Support Plan implementation, staff and leadership training, operational workflows, quality assurance, and organizational development.
Our consulting approach is grounded in practical provider experience. We understand that compliance cannot live only in a policy manual. Regulations must ultimately become processes that supervisors can manage, staff can understand, and organizations can consistently demonstrate.
The same philosophy that shaped our direct services now shapes our consulting work: build systems around the people who actually have to use them.
Who We Are Today
ATS is a collaborative team of coaches, teachers, mentors, trainers, and consultants committed to strengthening both the lives of individuals with I/DD and the organizations responsible for supporting them.
Our work has expanded considerably since 2014, but our foundation has remained the same. Whether we are helping an individual develop greater independence, supporting someone toward competitive employment, training a provider team, helping an agency respond to regulatory findings, or building systems for a new provider organization, our goal is to turn complicated requirements and ambitious goals into practical everyday action.
ATS continues to collaborate with other organizations throughout Oregon's I/DD community and is an active member of the Oregon Association of Provider Agencies (OAPA), supporting a stronger and more connected provider community.
From direct support to agency development, ATS continues to grow around one central purpose: helping people and organizations build the skills, systems, and confidence they need to succeed.
