Terry Kirkpatrick's Musings

2017-11-01T09:41:00.002-04:00

Can Words Really Be a Form of Violence?

In arguments over “free speech” being constrained or restricted on campuses and elsewhere, these days, the claim by opponents of certain speakers is that their speeches promote hate or their words are a form of violence against others (usually people who are different from the mainstream, white, male, “holders of privilege”). A word commonly used to refer to words that insult, offend, “put down”, or otherwise leave some form of negative perception by the receiver, is “microaggression”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression

I worked on “Information Management” policies for a human service organization back in the early 2000’s in which we began to address the way in which knowledge and information could be used in a detrimental way to harm others, including the reputation of the organization itself. As a charitable organization, we were charged with supporting and assisting homeless men, women, families and youth; people with developmental and other disabilities, including mental illness; seniors attempting to remain in their housing for as long as possible; people with physical disabilities trying to obtain and maintain housing in a small-town/rural community; and providing affordable housing to families, seniors and people with developmental disabilities. We had other charitable purposes as well, but the common concern was in ensuring that both those being served by the organization, and the organization itself, could trust that information available to other “townsfolk”, members of service clubs, other charities, and even private citizens standing in the role of benefactors, who also helped with support and assistance, would be guided by certain ethical principles to safeguard the reputations of “receivers” of service, and also “providers” of service. This far exceeded the principle most people understand as “confidentiality”.

We set about doing this by forming a task group representing all levels of the organization and included, of course, service recipients as well as providers. (It is not unusual, for example, in small-town/rural environments, that people providing services to others may also be recipients of other services, sometimes from the same organization. Thus, staff members supporting people with developmental disabilities might live in affordable housing supplied by the same organization).

The task group created a great policy statement with a detailed description of terms, and principles upon which it might be possible to break down whether a breach of the policy was likely intentional or merely accidental, and set out terms and conditions by which an alleged “offender” of the policy could be allowed due process, guided in the positive use of information, and if necessary due to extreme culpability or repeated offending, disciplined in order to ensure the policy was enforceable as well as having the desired effect of fostering highly ethical uses of information and knowledge in the service of others.

Knowledge and information can be passed along verbally as well as in some documentary form, i.e. written form, on social media, via video clip or other media such as podcast. Of course, the importance of transmitting knowledge cannot be underestimated. As the saying goes, “Knowledge is power”. As an educator and counselor, I have made the transmission of knowledge my life’s work. I have also learned, sometimes the hard way, that what you put out there may not always be received as intended. I have also learned that people utilize information, and its presentation, for a variety of nefarious purposes as well as for good. Information is used to manipulate in ways both good and evil. So, how do we judge information and its presentation to be one or the other? Without censoring, which most people seem to acknowledge, is in itself a “dangerous” practice.

Here is a list of ways in which information can be used for nefarious purposes:

To deceive
To mislead
To incite violence, hatred, and/or crimes against others
To denigrate
To disrespect
To perpetrate various forms of psychological and emotional abuse

The policy words we arrived at, about fifteen years ago, were: it is a “grievous infraction of proper and ethical conduct of staff or volunteers when information is obtained in a manner that is unethical or improper, or, however obtained, used against the interests of the corporation, staff or individuals who are served by the corporation”.

At about the same time, the organization was contracted to do a Group Home Study by the Town of Mississippi Mills, an amalgamated municipality composed of a small town (Almonte), a number of even smaller villages (Appleton, Pakenham, Clayton) and farmland governed previously as Ramsay Township. All told the municipality consisted of about 11,000 people, about 1/6 of the population of the County of Lanark at that time. This study suggested a great deal of information mismanagement had occurred surrounding the establishment of a group home for adolescent women in one of Almonte’s neighbourhoods. Much of the misleading and exaggerated information reported by neighbours of the group home was observed to be fueled primarily by emotional reactions and judgments to the myths, stereotypes and fallacies surrounding the establishment of group homes. Factual data was ignored, and people filtered what information there was available according to whether they wanted, or did not want, a group home in their neighbourhood.

The Group Home Study is available here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtdGVycnlraXJrcGF0cmlja3xneDo1ZDdiOGFlZjkyYzA5Yzhm

Raised in a culture where I was repeatedly told that “sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me” (which, by the way, after working with children and adults, many with disabilities, who have been abused, is demonstrably false), I have studied the ways in which hurt people can hurt people, but also “typical” people can hurt others both consciously and unconsciously.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tech-support/201308/why-words-can-hurt-least-much-sticks-and-stones

Thus, I write this blog about “information management” and how to evaluate whether a person is harming others by their use or misuse of words (information).

Thinking about it again, the effect of words and whether or not they are improper, depends on whether they violate the ethical principles as follows:

Do No Harm
Do Good for others
Strive to continuously improve one’s practice

These principles are hierarchical and no lower level principle can be argued to excuse transgressing against a higher principle. Thus, one cannot fail to do good for others by claiming that one is “learning” (in the act of striving to continuously improve – “lead, follow or get out of the way”), and one cannot do harm to others by claiming to be attempting to “do good”. Thus the primary principle is “Do No Harm”; the secondary principle is “Do Good”; and the tertiary principle is “Continuously Improve”.

Our work group stated the main value that things like “Gossip, rumour, innuendo, unfounded criticism or complaining, or excessively or inappropriately negative discussion of corporation, personnel, or client information is considered unprofessional and may result in serious consequences for those who breach the ethics code, these guidelines, or the oath of confidentiality”.

We tried to take pains to “set out examples of distinctions between unintentional, accidental, or well-meaning errors of information management from deliberate, non-accidental, malicious, or otherwise unprofessional breaches of this information management guideline”.

So, we considered “intent”, recognizing that this might be difficult to objectively discern, or judge; we considered there to be errors of “omission” as well as errors of “commission” – one could passively fail to do the right thing, and by so doing, allow wrong to be done, as well as actively acting wrongly; and we recognized the importance of both context and outcome (some measure of “harm”, mostly) in deciding about the seriousness of an infraction.

Thus, we attempted to define “Major Infractions” and “Minor Infractions” and we attempted to define that a NUMBER of “Minor Infractions” might constitute some form of equivalent to one “Major Infraction”.

A major infraction was considered to be when a person, subject to the policy statement (staff and volunteers who had official standing with the organization and had signed the “Information Management” agreement) had “received without taking appropriate action (error of omission), conveyed or acted upon (error of commission) information that:

1. Is confidential to client privilege, the disclosure of which has been judged [by a tribunal comprised of a member of staff/volunteers, a manager, and a member of the board of directors] a breach of the oath of confidentiality and without extenuating circumstances (an outright Major Infraction); or

2. If not confidential to client privilege, the information is judged by the tribunal to be:

a. False, incomplete, misleading, or otherwise in error; AND which

b. Has, or in the judgement of the tribunal, is highly likely to have, or ought to have been understood by the employee to have, a negative impact on individuals or the Corporation; AND

c. Where the tribunal discerns the employee to have shown motive or intent to transmit the information (error of commission) or to have shown disregard for the requirement of checking information for accuracy before acting on it (error of omission).

d. Where repeated infractions of a more minor nature have occurred over time, and there have been all reasonable efforts made to inform, educate about the policy and correct a person’s information mismanagement.

Minor infractions were considered to be similar to the second condition described above, but where all four conditions have not been met, i.e. there might be absent or unclear malicious or malevolent intent; a reasonable misjudgment of accuracy of information; a reasonable failure to comprehend how any harm may result; a reasonable belief that the information might be correct; a first offence or an offence by a new employee who might not yet be properly oriented to the policy, etc.

We also defined what kinds of “information management” offences there might be covered by this policy:

“Information” Subject to this Information Management Policy is Information that is:

false or misleading, negligently incomplete or demonstrably factually incorrect.
conveyed with more confidence than it deserves based on readily available facts and other information.
conveyed to people who have no discernable professional interest in the information.
obtained, conveyed or held to be accurate or judged to be correct, without a reasonable attempt to verify its accuracy or correctness before a judgement has been made upon it or actions taken based on it.
confidential, sensitive or potentially harmful to an individual or corporate interest if disclosed to others.
personal, and obtained or conveyed without consent of the parties directly implicated.
obtained in a manner that is unethical, deceitful, or improper.
discussed in public where there is no professional or reasonable rationale for doing so.
utilized with an apparent goal to advance a personal interest contrary to, or with the apparent potential to harm, the interest of the corporation or a person being served.
acted upon, when there is a discernible reason to believe the information is not accurate or reliable.
seen, or should reasonably be seen to bring harm to the public image of the corporation, directly or indirectly, without reasonable cause.
seen to breach a prior agreement to treat the information as sensitive or confidential.
seen to show a callous lack of respect to clients or personnel.
observed, received or conveyed as an infraction of the policy as a “repeat offence” despite counseling or instruction on the information management policies of the Corporation.

The task group, by way of trying to clarify further, also attempted to provide positive guidance and direction to the proper use of information in the service of others, protection of vulnerable clients, the corporation’s charitable good name and purposes, and so on:

When and How Information Should be Conveyed to Others

If in doubt about whether it is appropriate to convey any information about personnel, corporation or client issues, a staff person or volunteer should be able to answer the following questions in the affirmative:

Does the person I am speaking to need to have this information in the conduct of their responsibilities for the corporation, or are they entitled to the information by their position or responsibilities within the corporation?
Am I professionally required to give this information to this person? Is this the proper time and place to be conveying this information?
Can the information be overheard by someone who does not have a legitimate need to know or who does not have an abiding interest in the information for the good of the person or the corporation?
Do I have any or all required permission(s) or authority to speak about this, to this person?
By giving this information, am I helping the corporation or the person involved without doing harm to them, or anyone else, including the corporation?
By giving this information in this way, am I acting according to the law and the organization’s Ethics Code?
Before conveying this information to another, have I taken all appropriate steps to ensure its accuracy?
If I am unable to ascertain the information’s accuracy, am I properly conveying its level of accuracy?
Do I need to clarify and correct the information that I have, or that I am hearing, before acting on it?
What is the good purpose of giving or receiving this information?
Should I report this information to someone else?

The policy closes with the statement: “Without restricting the generality of the foregoing, a person should manage information pertaining to personnel, clients or the business of the organization with the same degree of care and attention that one would use in assisting a vulnerable and dependent client”.

Recommendations and feedback very welcome!

Resilience Well Depletion - Part 3

2017-07-13T22:08:00.004-04:00

In Part 1, I described the "Resilience Well" and how it gets depleted. In Part 2, I explained that the "Resilience Well" is refillable, and how to fill it.

In this, Part 3, I want to talk about how the well is depleted over time and how the well can be refilled over time, while engaged in pretty typical day to day activities.

The well has been designed into us by evolution, so it is calibrated to allow us to survive lengthy periods of adversity. Think flood, famine, drought for example. These events last months and even in extreme examples, years. So, it can take quite a long time to drain the "Resilience Well" to traumatic levels. This is assuming a person engages in a "typical" day to day series of activities, in which over a prolonged period, there is more resilience being "drained" from the well than there is flowing back into the well.

Typically, any lengthy period of time in which there is more "drain" than "gain" is usually followed by a similarly lengthy period of time in which there is more "gain" than "drain", and the well fills back up again.

In today's stressful, somewhat inactive, high-intensity information processing and problem-solving environments, there are many fewer periods of rest and relaxation caused by being physically tired and needing to rest, by lengthy periods with "nothing going on", or long journeys to get to and from places needed for survival, where the mind can rest and for lengthy periods of time, boredom reigns instead of stress and pressure. We have evolved ways of being creative, artistic, athletic and inventive during those times. In a sense, these activities seem to "fill our resilience well" and keep us from being too preoccupied with worry or care. Now, however, such natural "rest periods", for some people in particular, are few and far between.

We now find it necessary to "discipline" ourselves to carve out periods in our day, week or month for "recreation", rest and relaxation, or "filling the resilience well". There are many people engaged in service work, for example, who work far too long for far too many hours, without rest and relaxation. Policemen, nurses, emergency health personnel, teachers, social service workers, especially those who work on the "front lines", are all occupations which in my experience produce people whose "well is depleted". They appear in my practice having "hit the wall" - which I consider the moment people come to the realization, finally, that there is "nothing left in the tank (resilience well)". Usually this comes upon them suddenly and without warning.

Some may call this "burnout" or "brownout", or a "nervous breakdown", or "agitated depression", or some other "mental illness" and there would indeed appear to be similarities between what I have read about these conditions and what I am calling "resilience well depletion". But I am of the opinion that "resilience well depletion" is not a mental illness as much as it is an opportunity to realize lifestyle patterns of work without rest and relaxation and filling the resilience well, for too long a period of time (usually measured in years in my clinical experience), resulting in an "empty tank" ("resilience well").

I usually begin with an explanation of the phenomenon to clients in this state. This is followed by a "prescription" to carve out time in their days, weeks, and months for "joyful activity", rest and relaxation, time for themselves without interruption or distraction, especially from people who make demands upon them for problem-solving, executive functions like planning, decision-making, or multi-tasking.

The goal will be to ensure that in each three month span of time, there has been a rough "balancing" of the expenditure and revenue of resilience - in favour of revenue if the well needs to be filled after a lengthy period of adversity when it has been emptied too far.

Resilience Well Depletion - Part 2

2017-03-27T14:23:00.001-04:00

In my last blog post, I described the "resilience well" and how we may find ourselves "on empty". I said that the well is refillable.

The bad news is, that once it gets near empty, it takes a long time to refill - it is a slow process at the best of times. The best thing is to never let it get even close to empty in the first place. But making sure it stays mostly filled, and keeping the revenue and expenditure of resilience relatively balanced and stable, is a commitment to make to yourself and keep.

How Does the Resilience Well get Filled?

The essence of what fills your resilience well is: "Joyful Activity". Activities which bring you personal joy, contentment, peace, and happiness. For everyone, the list of what activities do this for you will likely be different. For me, it has been some of the following things:
1. sitting and thinking, with no interruptions or distractions
2. having "nothing to do"
3. paddling in my kayak with or without company
4. riding on a bicycle going nowhere in a hurry
5. reading - especially fiction, adventure stories
6. traveling through the Internet looking at good news stories, humourous memes and videos
7. cross-country skiing, making my own trail, on a quiet day in the woods, even at night
8. camping
9. watching (and sometimes re-watching) action movies and especially series and epics

I think you can see where I take my resilience back. Your list will be different. Start now, "refilling your resilience well". Put a piece of paper up on your fridge - every time you think of something you have once enjoyed, now enjoy, or might enjoy in future, put it on your list. This list is both a prompt and a reminder to take time out of your "responsible" day and take some "me time".

Resilience Well Depletion - Part 1

2017-03-20T22:59:00.000-04:00

"Resilience Well Depletion"

In this, and my next several blogs, I will be explaining my understanding of, and treatment for, "resilience well depletion".

I see this phenomenon in mothers of children with special needs; policemen; teachers; nurses; daycare providers; child protection workers; paramedics; personal support workers and care staff of all kinds in nursing homes; in fact, first responders and service people in human services of all kinds. These are where the risk is highest - but of course, "resilience well depletion" can be found in anybody where "demand on the person" has totally, and seemingly permanently exceeded, "supply of the person".

I have suffered from this myself, in fact, during my 30s - and promised myself then I would never again allow myself to let my "well get low", by ensuring I paced myself and took better care of myself from that point on. (So far) I have kept my promise to myself.

As I have seen more and more people in my practice with "resilience well depletion" I have honed my understanding and my explanation of it to people suffering from it. So now I think it is high time to write it down and make it more accessible to others.

What IS "Resilience Well Depletion"?

Imagine we have a cone-shaped well within us that is normally filled to the brim with a liquid I will call "resilience". Imagine further that the cone is marked in thirds, with the bottom third coloured red, the middle third coloured yellow, and the top third coloured green (see the picture below):

When the well is filled to the brim, there is maximum resilience available. There is also a (more or less) balance between resilience being lost (spent) and resilience being received (earned). Every day, imagine your psyche climbing the ladder to the top, and filling a large container with resilience. Then, your psyche climbs back down the ladder and goes off into life, using the container to pour out resilience on life's many challenges. Some challenges take little dabs of resilience, like scheduling appointments and completing chores. Some challenges take large amounts, like coping with a difficult boss, moving, grieving the loss of someone important to you, or coping with a medical diagnosis. All challenges, great and small, use up resilience. When your container is empty, up the ladder you go (which also spends resilience) to get some more. When you get to the top your psyche looks out on the great expanse of resilience, imagining it to be an essentially limitless supply.

But you notice from the picture, as you look toward the bottom of the cone-shaped well of resilience, the overall volume of available resilience is dramatically less the lower you go. If you continue, over a long period of time, to "spend" more resilience than you "earn back", your resilience supply will begin to drain. And the drain will accelerate. This "acceleration" of loss is not really understandable from your psyche's view. The rapidly decreasing amount of resilience is hidden from your psyche's top-down view and its ability to predict how much is left is skewed in favour of mistakenly thinking there is more than there actually is. Add in "denial" and "self-sacrifice" and your psyche will simply behave as if there is a "limitless supply". So your psyche does what it has always done, scoops up a container and heads back up and down the ladder, essentially blind to the increasingly fast loss of resilience as time goes on.

If you don't replenish the well, the level of resilience falls, faster and faster, until you're in the yellow zone. You need to get a smaller container to get resilience into, and you make more trips up and down the ladder. You begin to get more and more tired, but hey! you've been doing this for a long time and you still harbour the idea that your resilience is essentially infinite in supply. You are starting to get little "signs" that your resilience is waning, but you just keep going.

Once your resilience gets to the "red zone", however, you are now in really big trouble. Your body's survival reflexes begin to trigger on and off, seemingly to your psyche, unpredictably. You begin to wonder what's wrong with you. You find yourself unexpectedly exhausted from what used to be simple tasks and problems. Your autonomic nervous system begins to trigger on, putting you in "fight or flight" mode - where your heart races, adrenalin flows, breathing is fast and shallow, and seemingly you are unable to take a deep, relaxing breath. You suffer digestive system discomfort such as nausea, diarrhea or both. As the blood is directed by your ANS to the larger muscles, flowing away from your extremities, you may feel light-headed or faint, your hands and feet getting cold and clammy, or shaking uncontrollably. You may break into sweats and your hair stand on end, giving goose pimples on your flesh - probably your body's way of cooling yourself down in case, through running like hell or fighting, you overheat. These are all the ANS's built-in behaviours for helping you survive a predator or danger - except, looking around, you don't see any such thing. The danger, which your body may recognize and your mind may not, is that your well is in danger of running dry! Your parasympathetic nervous system may also begin to "misfire", making the same appraisal that you are under threat and need to go into survival mode. You may be "paralyzed with inaction", lose your initiative and "get up and go". You wonder if you are "losing your marbles". But that's not it - no, you are losing your resilience.

If you run yourself right down below a "safe" threshold of resilience, you might simply wake up one morning and you can't get out of bed, not even to help your child with a disability, or put on your uniform to go out and save people from themselves, or "answer the call".

In my next blog, I can tell you that there is good news. The "resilience well" is REFILLABLE. And, there is a way you can work to keep it filled, by making sure there is enough resilience flowing back into the well to make up for any deficit in resilience that has occurred over time. And the really good news is that how to earn resilience is actually FUN!

It's Not About The Nail

2013-06-29T13:02:00.001-04:00

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2011-05-04T10:50:00.000-04:00

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We need to understand where we all could end up

2011-01-20T09:06:00.002-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

In Tuesday, January 18th's Ottawa Citizen, Gail Asper wrote a piece she called "We need to understand where we came from". Gail is national campaign chair of Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The piece caught my eye based on a breakout section that announced that "Canada is one of the few western countries that does not study the Holocaust in its national institutions". Gail's father Izzy (Israel) Asper is a noted media and philanthropic figure whose name I would have more easily and quickly recognized.

First, I must say I would have, in the past, skipped over this section, like I suspect many Canadians not of Jewish descent would do. Secondly, I would have to agree with Gail, that most Canadians have not been taught anything of importance about the Holocaust, or for that matter, any of the other extreme Human Rights abuses of past cultures, civilizations and modern times particularly.

Image via Wikipedia

As a child, I remember the advent of TV, and I distinctly remember watching with childlike fascination the bulldozers pushing bodies into mass graves, and other footage of massive piles of bodies, these pictures no doubt taken in killing fields and in death camps in Nazi Germany. Keep in mind that I would have been just entering grade school at the time, and at 58, my memory for details (okay, it's NEVER been that good) is poor. I was unable to process the horror but it certainly has stuck in my mind, similar to the way news of John F. Kennedy's assassination and what I was doing at the time, has also stuck in my mind. I would have been just turned 11 at the time.

Image via Wikipedia

Frankly, I didn't get to appreciate the importance of this information until I attended a lecture by David Hingsburger who spoke of the way in which people with disAbilities were killed at, I think, either Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald (something with a B). Am I making the point that we have not been students of the Holocaust in Canada? Dave was riveting in his descriptions of the methods that were used to "euthanize" the sick, disfigured and disabled. And how these helped the Nazis develop the methods and probably also numerous rationalizations by which Jews, Gypsies and others were destroyed in later years at death camps in Germany. I also read a powerful piece by Dick Sobsey (think it might have been in the magazine of ARCH (Advocacy Research Centre for the Handicapped, Toronto) back in the 1980's or early 1990's on how Hitler's physician was asked to examine a disAbled child to see if he should be "euthanized", back in the early 1930's. The physician agreed that he should be, and Dick makes the point that the "mercy killing" of a young disAbled child led to the Nazi killing camps which eliminated 6 million Jews.

So, because of this connection with those who I have pledged to support, and when necessary, defend, I have this connection now, in my heart and soul, with Jews and the Holocaust, indeed, with a variety of peoples who have been selected for elimination or inhumane treatment simply on the basis of some devalued characteristic, such as skin colour, religion, sexual orientation, language, gender, cultural heritage, and so on.

With the wisdom born of lived experience, I can have a greater appreciation for the dishonour done to others by ignorance, arrogance, simple-minded notions of "us" and "them", and the part of the human psyche that harbours evil.

Because of this connection, I absolutely agree with Israel Asper that "in order to understand why a country is worth having, you have to know where it came from and that the rights we enjoy today are as a result of the heroic efforts of many ordinary people who took responsibility for the advancement of our human rights..."

Do I think we should study the Holocaust? Yes. Is the Holocaust the only example or even the best (worst) example of extreme human rights abuses? I don't know - it's a strange conversation to compare the extent of man's inhumanity between one event or series of events and another. Does an exhibit about the Holocaust elbow other extreme human rights abuses such as mass exterminations, starvations, and so on to other peoples, of other cultures, religions, etc. out of the way? No, I don't think so. Thanks to all cultures who have taken great pains to preserve the written, recorded, photographic and video archives of this filthy disgusting display of human behaviour, whether individually by secular or religious leaders, by formal organizations of a religion, tribe, state, or government, or by a whole ethnic group against another, there are reminders of the lessons to be learned today. It is not only history, it is also the future, if we do not take the required actions to prevent such atrocities.

Dick Sobsey is a regular writer on abuse, maltreatment and death-making of people with disAbilities. Wolf Wolfensburger coined the term "death-making" in his histories of treatment of people with disAbilities. I recommend the reader to both authors for how people with disAbilities are still at risk in today's bright, well-educated societies of the West, which prides itself on being the rescuers from tyranny and extermination, as Allies during the second World War. Both remind us that the framework of laws that were used in Germany to justify the "mercy killing" of the disAbled boy, and later millions of Jews, were imported from the State of Virginia, in the United States of America.

Reports of abuse of the elderly, and various forms of euthanasia discussion, including withholding of treatment as well as assisted suicide, for those with impairments of old age, bring to mind that we are all aging and may find ourselves living with the phenomenon of being unwanted, unproductive, and unable to defend ourselves. So we shouldn't be smug about things like this. Those who don't remember their history are doomed to repeat it.

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2011-01-16T11:06:00.000-05:00

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Picketing in front of group homes and Bill 83

2010-11-25T13:52:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I was forwarded an email from Kory Earle, President of People First of Ontario, responding to article(s) by Jordy Cummings. One of these was in a labour publication by "The Socialist Project" called "The Bullet" (November 23, 2010).

Kory, whose thoughts and character I quite admire, had this to say in his email (in his own writing):

"Well I have never been called ''unehical'' I will not stand up to pretest to get rid of scabs, This is what the unions want, What will happen to the people in homes if we had no replacement workers? This then become a safety issue! ...It's time for the Government of Ontario to stand up and take action, People with disabilities deserve better in this province. I am committed to standing up with People First and saying NO TO PICKING IN FRONT OF PEOPLE'S HOMES!

Now, this caused me to go to the source of his concern and read the article(s). I say this in plural because the article is at least in two places - The Bulletin of The Socialist Project - as cited above; also published earlier (November 15, 2010) in

Austerity and disability: Opposing Bill 83

BY JORDY CUMMINGS

| NOVEMBER 15, 2010

http://www.rabble.ca/news/2010/11/austerity-and-disability-opposing-bill-83

As I understand him to say, Jordy takes issue with the pending legislation (Bill 83) which would "outlaw" the picketing of group homes. It seems Mr. Cummings states the case relatively clearly in his opening paragraphs.

At that point, though, Mr. Cummings steps into it:

"On the face of it, this may seem to some people like a no-brainer. What kind of privileged goon, the bill seems to imply, would make disabled people feel unsafe? Indeed, even progressive rabble columnist John Bonnar wrote uncritically about this bill's passage, taking self-appointed representatives of the disabled at their words, even when these folks are connected with the management."

First of all, Mr. Cummings refers to some unidentified representatives as "self-appointed", and claims that they are connected with "the management". It seems, from reading John Bonnar's article, that Mr. Cummings is probably referring to representatives of Community Living Ontario (Kimberly Gavan) and The Council (Melissa Abrams), a consumer advisory body to Community Living Ontario, as if they were "management". Come on, Jordy, these folks do not run the group homes you refer to, and if you think they represent "management" then you must also feel that CUPE and OPSEU, and the other unions who represent workers in developmental services, are also "management". Not all authorities are management, Mr. Cummings. Your intolerance is showing.

Kory Earle comes across very well in being precise about what he supports and what he does not.

"Earle made it clear that he and his colleagues at Thursday’s press conference believe in the right to strike...“What we don’t believe in is the picketing in front of people’s homes,” he said. “No one should have to live like this. Having port-a-potties on their front lawn or picketers yelling and screaming on their front lawn at any time of the day or night.”

This shameful kind of behaviour that actually happened, and is not an exaggeration for political gain or to grab the media spotlight, is exactly why there is now a bill aimed at shutting down picketing in front of people's homes. Shame on unions for trading off respect for people, one of labour's most important and support-worthy principles, by elevating self-interest (worker rights, entitlements and means to address workplace inequities) over the rights of vulnerable people who trust in, and depend upon, these workers, sometimes, for their very life, and certainly most times, for the ultimate quality of their home life and security.

This was a VERY BAD CHOICE, to picket in front of group homes, and to harass "scabs" there (replacement workers) in the attempt to make one's case against underfunding, poor treatment by management of workers, or whatever other grievances there might be between organized labour and developmental services' management.

As a former member of both bargaining unit and management sides of the table, I cannot for the life of me understand what possessed union representatives to give this direction to workers. What was once a relatively sympathetic view of such workers is easily turned against them by such actions. Not a good way to curry support for one's position. And it makes management, as well as the major funders, look positively heroic as well. Not what unions typically aim for, I would say.

Mr. Cummings states: "What must be kept in mind is that any legislation that impacts the right of workers to take the type of actions that they see fit, chips away at the rights of all workers, unionized and non-unionized, not to mention the rights of the disabled to receive top-quality services from well-trained, non-scab workers." and later, " Let it be stated clearly, the capitalist state has no legitimacy to make demands upon how the working class struggles, period".

This might have worked in the industrial age where the products of workers' labour were inanimate objects. It is scary that these same impassioned workers, who might be caring for me and you in hospital, nursing home or some other support program some day, may use us as cannon fodder in their war against management.

Look, Mr. Cumming, I would be happy to talk with you about a new model for ensuring that those who care for human beings are not disadvantaged by having their rights balanced (and thereby, perhaps, restricted) with the need for dignified, and respectful, care of those who are the objects of those workers' labour.

I have more sympathy for Mr. Cummings' argument when he asks: "What is a bigger threat, indeed to the well being of those with disabilities -- a couple of isolated picketline actions that can be dealt with under existing laws? Or having those with disabilities cared for by underpaid and less-skilled scab workers, part of the growing reserve army of labour who are willing to take on such jobs in a time of capitalist crisis and a new round of austerity measures."

However this is one of those "rhetorical" arguments: the choices are not actually restricted to only his two options, and in fact, picketline actions were neither only a "couple" nor were they dealt with under existing laws. But I have to agree with him that we wouldn't want people with disabilities "cared for by underpaid and less-skilled scab workers..." The unfortunate fact, however, is that SOMEBODY has to care for people who need support for their health, in some cases their very lives, and certainly, in large measure, their well-being. It is questionable to me why would allow such workers to have the right to strike. I have always seen such workers as "essential services". Binding arbitration might be preferable to having the right to strike.

Mr. Cummings goes on to say: "Let's get a few things straight -- most home care workers work just above the poverty line, and by all accounts are some of the hardest working and dedicated people one could possibly know. These aren't fat-cats on Rob Ford's gravy train. These are people who want to help other human beings, but also want to ensure that in doing so, they have some job security, a living wage and safe work conditions".

So far, I'm with him on that. It certainly does seem the case that those working with insurance papers, money lending, automobile parts manufacturing, and absolutely, those working in the oil and energy sectors, even those who work with wood, stone, brick and steel, do better, on the whole, than those who are looking after those whose lives and well-being are the product of their work.

I will support Mr. Cummings' exhortation against labour in the developmental services sector being taken advantage of by privileged classes, and a hostage media, and a neo-conservative agenda of "survival of the fittest" or similar trend such as removing the state's responsibility for vulnerable citizens, whether they be people with disabilities, seniors, or people who through no fault of their own have been marginalized by bigotry, stereotype or discrimination of any kind. We'll just have to find another way - not by giving meat-headed, angry and self-absorbed strikers free reign to make public spectacles at the expense of people whose homes they are trespassing against and whose lives they are holding hostage in order to promote attention to their various grievances. While this does not mean all strikers will act, or have acted this way, we have already seen that just a few with the so-called "right" to do so, ruin it for everybody.

Mostly, though, I go with Kory on this one. I support workers' finding all available means to exert their right to be treated fairly. It pains me that we should even have to exert this right - such should be protected and extended by our Society as a fundamental responsibility of those who have enough to get by on. Good luck waiting for that one. I will NOT support any worker's tactics which trods on the rights, well-being and sensibilities of vulnerable people in their care, no matter what is being sought. The end does NOT justify the means.

RSA Animate - 21st century enlightenment

2010-10-22T10:45:00.000-04:00

Open Thinking - The Creative Deficit?

2010-10-22T10:27:00.000-04:00

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

2010-10-22T09:36:00.000-04:00

Old Business - but Not Gone Away

2010-09-14T09:16:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

NIMBY and Group Homes

I was going through some old material (NOT THAT OLD!!!) and found our copy of the Group Home Study we did for Mississippi Mills, an amalgamated community comprised of what used to be Almonte, Pakenham and Ramsay Township. Population of about 11,000, and a geography of about 500 square km., north and east of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

The Group Home Study was commissioned by the Town of Mississippi Mills when a privately operated group home for adolescent girls was opened in a section of Almonte, causing a neighbourhood backlash. Complete with media attention, there was considerable outcry from concerned citizens in that neighbourhood.

At the time, I was Executive Director of Mills Community Support Corporation, and the Chairperson of the Board, Kieran Broadbent, encouraged us to bid on the contract to do the study. We won the bid and over the course of about six months, completed the study, which included interviews with as many neighbours as agreed to be interviewed, town staff, and the operators of the home. We offered to meet with a group of the girls, or with individuals living in the group home, who wished to have a say in our study, but this was (politely) declined. The issue had been quite high profile in Town for many months before we began our study.

We concluded at the end of our study that we were dealing with a phenomenon called "NIMBY" (for Not in My Back Yard) which fueled heated discussion and pointed it towards fear and at times exaggeration of concerns. We made a number of recommendations for how this should be dealt with in future by Mississippi Mills, and other communities, since we also discovered it was anything BUT an isolated incident.

We also discovered that Municipalities across Ontario stumble upon this issue quite regularly, and make more or less the same mistakes over and over again. Generally, group homes for seniors, children, people with disabilities, children and adult with mental health problems, homeless shelters, shelters for women fleeing domestic violence, and other supportive or assistive housing options of similar nature, make "easy victims" of discriminatory behaviour both from citizens and, from time to time, municipal staff. We should add that this was not the case in Mississippi Mills, where the planner in particular was supportive and courageous from the start. In return for this, he was threatened with loss of his employment (but thankfully, not by Town management), and subject to personal attack.Meanwhile, in a community not far away, municipal staff held up the opening of a group home for four ex-residents of Rideau Regional Centre for somewhat inflated building code and/or other by-law or town ordinance reasons.

We discovered that there exists, in municipal bylaws all across Ontario, wordings and "rules", enforceable by these municipalities (but in many cases, not enforced), that are "illegal", and where cases of similar bylaw or ordinance rulings have been struck down, not only by the Ontario Munipal Board on appeal, but some which have traveled all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and there, struck down as "unconstitutional". Yet they are still "on the books" and still, often, force small, non-profit and charitable organizations, to hire lawyers, suffer unreasonable delays, get driven to hurdle barriers, jump through hoops and take verbal abuse in meetings and in the media, as well as having to try to protect their vulnerable "clients" from this abuse and scorn. And except for those many cases where the organization "gives up" and relocates, or cancels the project, which don't seem to be tracked by government or the media, THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A CASE GO BEFORE THE OMB, on such an appeal, THAT HASN'T BEEN SUPPORTED TO PROCEED. Sadly, the lesson seems to be: prevail, and persist, and you will (eventually) be cleared to proceed to open your group home, if you have sited it properly for human habitation, even if you are "too close" to another group home according to municipal bylaws, even if your municipality has a bylaw that restricts the number of people with disabilities (expressed in a specific number, or as a proportion of the population) who can live in the community (I KID YOU NOT), or directs them to industrial zones (who wants children to grow up in the manufacturing district?). But not until you have exhausted and discouraged your volunteers, subjected your clients to taunts, verbal abuse and disparaging character references in the local media, and used up taxpayer dollars in delays, appeals, staffing costs to attend public meetings, and so on. Worst of all, this repeats annually, despite absolute support by the highest court in the land, that a group home can be sited in ANY location zoned for residential living, in ANY municipality in the Province.

You can read our Group Home Study (published February 2003) on my website at https://sites.google.com/site/mterrykirkpatrick/clients/resources and scroll down the resources to "Group Home Study Final with Disclaimer.pdf".

I suspect the Town asked us to include the Disclaimer because, of course, our study ruffled quite a few feathers in the Town. Normally it goes without saying that a Town does not have to accept ANY, let alone ALL, recommendations from a study of this nature. WE probably today wouldn't be persuaded to recommend some of the actions to be taken (instead, I would probably recommend that all restrictive bylaws governing the placement of group homes in a properly zoned section of a municipality be stricken, and that NO special process be undertaken or ordered through municipal ordinance, for a group home or sponsoring organization, provided they are meeting the same requirements expected of any other private citizen in locating their housing.

After the study was published, the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association (ONPHA) began work on lobbying government to take a leadership role in eliminating the phenomenon of NIMBY through some form of affirmative action or legislation. I'll have to find out what, if anything, has happened with that initiative.

Recent Announcements - M Terry Kirkpatrick BA RLC MEd

2010-09-11T17:48:00.000-04:00

Recent Announcements - M Terry Kirkpatrick BA RLC MEd

Live Conference AND Webinar - Spiritual Care - M Terry Kirkpatrick BA RLC MEd

2010-09-10T12:08:00.000-04:00

Live Conference AND Webinar - Spiritual Care - M Terry Kirkpatrick BA RLC MEd

Upcoming Fall Conferences for Front-Line Care Providers

2010-09-02T15:19:00.002-04:00

I've been "holidaying" and not doing any blogging, but summer is alas, coming to an end!
Among the many things that come about at this time of year, are exciting conferences in the fall. I have a few to let you know about.

Strengthening Leadership– September 20, 2010
Strengthening Leadership is a conference for PSW Supervisors. It is the only event of its kind. PSW Supervisors from across the province will connect at this day-long opportunity for professional development. This event is being held at the Hilton Suites Conference Centre & Spa in Markham, Ontario. To register, visit www.psno.ca

Next up is September 26-28, a collaboration of two groups, on the broad topic of Spiritual Care. On September 26, 2010, the SHRTN (Seniors Health Research Transfer Network) Spiritual Care Community of Practice (http://beta.shrtn.on.ca/nodes/shrtn/cop/content/13) presents an afternoon-evening series of workshops. Beginning at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 26, there will be an update on the Community of Practice. At 1:30 the Reverend Dr. Peter Barnes will lead a discussion on Development of Volunteers in Bereavement Care - Screening, Training, Evaluating and Supporting. Peter was the founding leader of the Spiritual Care Community of Practice. Then Janet Stark, a long-time member of the Community of Practice, will lead discussion of Spiritual Care Needs at the End of Life. Have supper with your friends, new and old, then join us for a discussion, again led by Janet Stark, on "Care Clowning". This is a tradition made most famous by Patch Adams, whose true story is told in the feature film of the same name from 1998, where the title role was played by Robin Williams.

One of the truly great reasons to take this in, other than the inexpensiveness of both accommodations and registration, and the offer of at least partial reimbursement by the Community of Practice, is the venue. The Jackson's Point Conference Centre, run by the Salvation Army, is located near the shores of Lake Simcoe in Durham Region is relatively easy to get to. Google Jackson's Point Conference Centre to see how to get there.

To register for this conference, contact Mary-Alice Policicchio, Chaplain, F.J.Davey Home, 733 Third Line East, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, P6A 7C1 or get the registration form from the brochure and fax it to 1-705-256-4207.

We plan to remotely broadcast the “live” workshops through SHRTN via Adobe Acrobat Connect videoteleconference if the facilities permit. If you would like to participate in the sessions “virtually” through videoteleconferencing, you will need simply a computer with speakers and a high-speed internet connection. To test if your home or work system is able to use this technology, go to www.adobe.com click on “Products”, choose Acrobat Connect Pro and follow the instructions on the page. If you can see the video clip that shows a demo of the technology, your computer is ready to go.

To register for the remote broadcasts only (too bad you couldn't be there in person), click on this link or copy and paste it into your browser:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HP2RBXS

Another great reason is to get an early start on the rest of the proceedings, which is offered by the Ontario Multifaith Council. OMC runs their conference annually. Over two days, take in some great topics on Spiritual Care such as the Keynote Address by Kelley Raab Mayo: “From Meditation to Music to Mosaics: Spiritual Practices in the Context of Holistic Care”; “Assists Technology: Relieving Anxiety and Pain Without Drugs”; “Grief Matters – Walking with the Bereaved”; “Ethical Issues in Long Term Care”; “Reaching Beyond the Traditions: Spiritual and Religious Care to Muslims”; “Prevalence and Mental Health Care Needs of Inmates in Ontario Correctional Facilities: Implications for Policy and Practice”; “Spiritual Care Approach: Assessment Tool for Use in Holistic Care”; Faith and Law Dialogues on Crime Prevention”; “Losses and Lingers (How spirituality and the capacity for faith lingers in patients with dementia”; “The Healing Power of Song”; “Spiritual Care Practices to Nurture Spirituality, Health and Well-Being”; “Spirituality and Grief: Caring for the Grieving Community”; “Spiritual Care Directives: Giving Family and Friends the Resources to Care for Our Spirits”; “Muslim Inmates: Challenges and Ideas”; and “Religion and Science: Harmony or Conflict?”

Go to www.omc.ca to register for this conference.

PSW Provincial Conference – October 18, 2010
This year marks the 4th Annual PSW Provincial Conference: Professional Development for Continuous Quality Improvement. Personal Support Workers are an essential component of today’s health care system, and this conference is a fantastic opportunity for professional development opportunities to develop the essential skills and knowledge that will drive quality improvements within their organizations. 500 PSW delegates are expected from across the province and representing all health care sectors. The PSNO annual conference is a great opportunity for staff to connect and network with other PSWs, Attendant Care Workers, Homemakers, Supervisors and senior leaders in the field. This event is being held at the Hilton Suites Conference Centre & Spa in Markham, Ontario.

To register, go to www.psno.ca

Next up, is November 6, 2010, for the Music Care Conference, co-sponsored by the Room 217 Foundation (www.room217.ca), the Laurier Centre for Music Therapy Research (www.soundeffects.wlu.ca), the Laurier Centre for Music in the Community, Baycrest Hospital (www.baycrest.org) and the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty of Music.

Workshop Topics Include Music, Memory & Cognition, Music and Dementia Care, Singing for the Soul, Music and Special Needs Children, Improvisation and the Creative Spirit, Music and Palliative Care, Drumming, Music, Grieving and Loss, The Psalms of David, Prayer Meditation and Music
To register: http://www.room217.ca/index.php/music-care-conference

Finally, for those in Eastern Ontario, is two days of workshops on November 17 and 18, 2010 in Carleton Place. Douglas Cartan presents “Examining the Purpose of our Work”, sponsored by the Lanark Professional Training and Development Committee, a collaborative of Developmental Services Providers in Lanark County. Registration is $60 for one day before November 8, after which the price goes up to $70 per person for one day. The workshop is the same presentation on two different days to allow for shift workers a choice of days.

To register contact Tannia Cooke at Lanark Community Programs, 613-257-7619 ext. 226

As I am advised, I will also promote other conferences and workshops.

For OTN broadcasts, check out the following site: http://webcast.otn.ca/

For events sponsored by the Ontario Community Networks of Specialized Care, go to http://www.community-networks.ca and click on Events Calendar

Kurt Vonnegut's 1981 Article in Psychology Today - A Truly Modern Hero

2010-07-23T11:37:00.000-04:00

I often think of this story as I encounter people who ignore evidence and stick to their beliefs, even when they suffer for it, or more likely, other people suffer for it. And how, at times, the status quo is rigorously enforced and maintained by "shooting the messenger". Kurt and Psychology Today took this piece from a larger address (a commencement speech to Southampton College of Long Island University in New York, May, 1981. Kurt, well known for his hip, glib, and anti-establishment writings blending satire, black comedy and science fiction and for works like "Breakfast of Champions" and "Slaughterhouse Five". It is such a good piece that I think I'll link to a web site that reprints the whole article: http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/Misc/Semmelweis.html

In summary, though, Ignaz Semmelweiss had the temerity to suggest to physicians in Austria in the mid-1800's that their habits of not washing their hands before attending to women in childbirth was causing significant numbers of deaths (from puerperal fever or "childbed death"). In those days to suggest this was an insult to his social superiors. Handwashing was not common medical practice, and in some cases, doctors would come straight from dissecting corpses in the morgue to the bedside of pregnant women in labour, without washing their hands. Despite overwhelming evidence in favour of his idea, handwashing did not become common practice and Semmelweiss was forced out of Austria and died at his own hand when he infected himself with a scalpel.

Vonnegut punches this story out like he's slapping the faces of his audience - wake up, people! sometimes the status quo IS our problem.

Autism New Jersey, Inc.

2010-07-09T09:35:00.000-04:00

Autism New Jersey, Inc.

Here's a report that asked individuals with autism, and their families, as well as professionals, what was needed to make a quality life and future.

The Power of Positive Thinking

2010-07-06T07:14:00.000-04:00

http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Marital-Therapist-Harville-Hendrix-Tells-the-Simple-Truth-About-Love
A particularly good insight: "Energy follows attention. Every time you "invest" in the negative, you are honing your ability to detect faults.Your energy amplifies the annoying and the fragile, and you create the conditions that allow your problems to grow like weeds in an unkempt field." These words by Harville Hendrix i O Magazine, February 2010, put a basic principle in simple terms. "Energy follows attention. Every time you "invest" in the negative, you are honing your ability to detect faults."

The corollary is also true. Every time you invest in the positive, you are strengthening your ability to detect potential and good.

We also know that behaviourally, the strongest influence on many behaviours is a history of being positively reinforced, or rewarded. Your attention to the positive is often, by itself, a positive reinforcement of the behaviour that precedes, and is associated with, your attention.

"Thus endeth the lesson".

Thoughts on Wolf Wolfensberger's "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 148-162

2010-06-23T19:24:00.000-04:00

I think this will be my last blog on Wolf's article. I am thankful that he continues to be provocative enough to cause me to expend this amount of energy reading and digesting his thoughts on the matter of a potential crash of civilization as we know it. Damn, but don't we need to sometimes get excited about something to really make sense of it, anymore!

Recently I had the privilege of taking part in some research discussion about the value of "Personal Support Workers" to seniors' health, and I have long been a keen advocate of the value of "Developmental Service Workers" to people with developmental disabilities. I regularly respond to the somewhat rhetorical question of "why do we treat these people so poorly, and accord them so little respect, when they just might be, dollar for dollar, the best value in the [health care/developmental services] universe?" with my own version of a Wolf Wolfensberger answer: because they are devalued, that's why! By their own willingness to devote their personal care to people who themselves are so devalued, they are devalued themselves.

What should we do? We should smarten up, that's what!

I mentioned in my first blog on this topic that Wolf observes that "interest groups" are more inclined to hold rallies to "protect their jobs" than to advocate for the "people they serve". This may be so, but it just may be the case that some recognize the following: what we might be fighting for (or against) is our own future! Statistics relating to Ontario's Alzheimer's and related dementia population suggest a near-doubling of the proportion of the population diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease between now and 2038 (Alzheimer Society Rising Tide, 2010). Already, almost half of those diagnosed are in some form of long term care institution. The rest are presumably in short-term hospital or acute care settings, because only about a third of those diagnosed are living at home themselves or with family. Hospital emergency waits in Ontario are already connected indirectly to the numbers of seniors in hospital beds who need less than hospital care but do not have a suitable option otherwise, and are blocking new admissions to hospital.

Wolf's admonition (Recommendation 9 of 12) to "fight to the bitter end" (p. 157) to preserve services which prevent the escalation of services to higher and higher levels of support, and therefore, higher expenditures is brought forward here. He cites as an example home help services which maintain people in their own homes rather than see them escalate to nursing home. We seem to fund the high end better and more securely than the low end in the spectrum of services, so we should NOT be surprised that people who should be served in their own homes in the community, in their family, or in lower-support areas for longer periods of time before escalating to a higher-support, more costly alternative, end up more quickly in such better-supported systems.

In an earlier blog I stated: "I concur with Wolf when he says the cuts will be largely decided by administrative levels of the bureaucracy who do not really know the service sector, or who have very little clinical training or experience. Such has also been my experience. Real people with real needs often get hurt at times like these, and so do the champions who attend to their needs in the face of little to no support, financial or otherwise."

One of the reasons our systems operate in such an irrational, non-strategic and counter-intuitive fashion, is because we have been schooled this way in our thinking. Short-term thinking prevails over taking the long view. "What's in it for me?" thinking is virtually a standard in our Western thinking, and as an attitude, it is all around us. Executive compensation plans are a good example of this, and no more so than in the areas furthest from humanitarian in orientation - banks, oil companies, financial institutions and real estate development firms as a few examples. Competition over collaboration. Intellectual property protection over sharing life-enhancing ideas that make a better world for those who now can barely make it through the day. Our lives are more hurried than ever, but how much of that is quality time?

Strategies to "get the monkey off our back" are seen in mental health, developmental disabilities, and probably (though I do not have the same direct experience, yet), seniors health care. Bad discharge decisions, over-reliance on family, volunteer, and underfunded community support systems, and a host of other "barely visible" attempts to keep people safe and housed and supported in the least expensive way possible are completely discounted because there is no lobby, no VOICE, no association of advocates, loud enough to speak up and demand action. Even if there were, it will probably be received in a manner not unlike the Autism lobby which laboured for DECADES for something which is so easily documented and can by comparison be so easily related to by the rational mind.

This is not to discount the fabulous work being done by organizations, individuals and even Provincial associations - which just may be credited with whatever progress we have made. And there have been some governments, in my experience, of all political leanings (at least in Ontario) who have contributed substantially to the developments that have taken place (Ontario closed its last remaining Schedule I (directly government operated) institutions in 2009, a process that was begun with a Conservative government, continued through successive Liberal, New Democrat, Conservative, and now Liberal, governments).

Here are some of my suggestions, which I think are not different from those Wolf has given:
1. Stop the fighting! For-profit operators being shunned by non-profit board-operated organizations for one. Day support service operators versus residential support service operators for another. Competing non-profits operating in the same jurisdictions yet another. One group of ideologues versus another, of any ilk.
Evidence-based versus "new age" philosophies of care and service.
2. Start looking at outcomes more than process. ARE people getting to valued social roles, REALLY? Or are they the human capital on whose backs people are being employed? Just who calls the shots, in a residential setting, or in a day service? The needs of the persons served, or is it the government regulations, union, organizational budget, wishes of the leader, parents' lobby, or something else entirely?
3. Stop over-promising and under-delivering. That game is very old and will not lead to credibility, especially when times get tough. A variant of that game is to use high-support POTENTIAL service recipients to bolster your proposal for funding a new service, then when it is approved, use screening mechanisms to ensure the high-support people DON'T ACTUALLY GET ADMITTED, so you have a well-funded program with lower-support demands on it. This often gets played hard in the closing days of an institutional closure. Don't imagine that once the institution gets closed, you aren't going to be put under considerable pressure to pay that back, somehow, and perhaps for a very long time. It would be much better to under-promise and over-deliver, although that may mean you will eventually fall under scrutiny as a service that delivers luxury services and still face the prospect of a cut-back!
4. Start TRULY valuing front-line staff, not only giving lip service, but supporting, training, investing in, and retaining the best people, many of whom are worth much more than the best-paid executives in the country. On that I agree with Wolf, we seem to have our priorities crooked. "Solidarity, collaboration, and interconnectedness" for example, over self-absorbed individualism and "post-modern" values and behaviour.
5. STOP shining the righteous light on the barely relevant - to shine it instead on the important aspects of what needs to be done. Thus, stop "language policing", "band-wagon jumping", "fad following", "buzz-word parrotting" and so on. It takes energy that is best directed at more basic activities. Focusing more on the outcome and understanding, rather than mostly on the means or the political correctness, of getting things done, can help. Thus if a person is respectful and courageous in defending and developing valued social roles for a person, focus on that, and not on their characterization of a person as "mentally retarded". If a self-advocate speaks about the hurt and distress use of such a label causes, respect their wish and use their recommended phrase instead when speaking in their presence. But don't spend a lot of energy and time debating which of dozens of euphemisms is the best one to use to describe the phenomenon of a person with an intellectual impairment or learning disability. For most instances, referring to people by name is vastly superior than referring to them by their class, category, or diagnosis, anyway.

While it is sometimes, and maybe often, the case that one's language is a window to one's soul or consciousness, language is also a means of trying to work out problems and create new opportunities. Strangling a thought before it is even born is bad practice, at least in my world.

I really think that sometimes Wolf's long experience in the trenches of developmental disabilities (indeed, more like defending the interests of a host of marginalized human beings) must be very hard to live with. I marvel at how he doesn't stop, when many people upon viewing his world and realizing there is so much inertia and so many obstacles to achieving that vision, would simply fall into despair. I can forgive him his hyperbole, and his sarcasm, and his occasional "s--t-disturbing" provocativeness, when I think how it must be to be able to see so clearly when all around him seem stuck in self-deceipt. The man gets it, and we don't. So simple. Wolf, I'm going to keep listening as well as I can, please stick to your guns.

Almost the last instalment of my review of Wolfensburger's "How to Comport Ourselves..." in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 148-162

2010-06-18T10:05:00.002-04:00

I promised to finish my recap of Wolfensburger's last few points in his article "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources" in the Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 148-162 published by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (April 2010). In the last section, Wolf tackles a specific example of "an arrangement of great promise that falls partially into the category of least bad alternative" (p. 160)

Wolf explains that the unemployment rate for handicapped people has been 60-70%, "despite all the vocational, rehabilitation, and supported employment efforts and a roughly doubling of expenditures in recent years" (p. 160). Yet, he says, nobody has achieved much thinking "outside of the employment box". He claims that he has been proposing, in vain, developing unpaid, valued adult work roles (for a number of reasons he explains in his writings on Social Role Valorization). According to Wolf, there have been at least four obstacles to unpaid work by handicapped adults; 1. North Americans now equate work with jobs - which Wolf declares was not always like that - once upon a time, everybody worked, most often without pay, but simply for their "keep"; 2. Ideologues have created an environment where unpaid work is interpreted negatively, shunned, and devalued. He closes this argument with "A handicapped person who helps to clean up two neighborhood businesses on an unpaid basis is more contributive to society than the executve of the Lehman Brothers financial firm who received half a billion dollars compensation a year (Roberts, 2008)..." (p. 160); 3. The paid service system ("empire" he calls it) lacks any incentive to develop unpaid work roles for dependent adults; 4. People don't get the idea of social role valorization and the importance of it above the notion that any work done by people with disabilities should be paid or it is not of value, is demeaning, or in some other way less than desirable.

Wolf's closing arguments include: acting ourselves, in a coherent, cohesive and compelling way, or else we can expect Society to act peremptorily in such a way that we get less than we could have perhaps bargained for otherwise; watch out for governments engaging in a "shell game" playing one advocacy group against another, "dividing and conquering" (his earlier notion of advocates seflishly pushing for their own singular agenda and "letting the devil take the hindmost"); draw up "doomsday plans" as some are doing in the business world - anticipatory planning, he calls it - to ensure an organized and respected response to situations that may develop in tmes of severe fiscal restraint; develop a "Think Tank" and/or series of national meetings with "wise participants" with a goal to evolve national strategies and policies which can be presented when needed.

Lastly, Wolf encourages us NOT to be like the "institutional people" of the 1970's who believed they would last forever - "do not fall into this recurring error [of not listening], but be imaginative, less fearful, and think ahead, and keep the welfare of people with impairments upmost." Unable to resist a "parting shot" he closes with "You should count yourself fortunate that you hear me say today some of the things that financial expert Suze Orman tells people for $80,000 a shot (Kolhatkar, 2009)..." (p. 161)

In my next blog, and probably the last submission on this article, I will propose my own thoughts and an overall review of Wolf's work in this article, in relation to the Ontario experience and what I have seen and heard from Wolf before.

Next Instalment of my review of Wolf Wolfensburger's "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources" in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 148-162

2010-06-17T10:02:00.000-04:00

Here I will review the final three recommendations from Wolf for developing "broad strategy proposals that aim at a favorable cost/yield ratio" (p. 153). I reviewed the previous nine recommendations in previous blogs.

Wolf's tenth recommendation is to take the competency development of impaired people much more seriously, remarking that currently, "there are enormous variations in competency emphases in different services and settings, including in family life" (p. 158). His point is that development of greater personal, social and economic competencies lessens dependence and reduces the need for paid services, and so should be cultivated from the earliest age. While many people would see this as stating the blindingly obvious, Wolf points out that social and economic competencies have been neglected, at least in part due to a growing emphasis on self-determination (without linking this to competencies) and on "inclusion" (his quotation marks) without corresponding ties to competency acquisition. With his tongue firmly in cheek, Wolf points out that "social competencies include such things as courtesy, obedience, cooperativeness, and social graces, and economic competencies include the ability and willingness to work and to submit to the instructions of superiors..." (p. 158). I am reminded of a Family Guy episode where Peter (the father) is tested and found to be intellectually and developmentally impaired, progresses to wearing a helmet and begins to act as though entitled to all manner of narcisisstic treatment and special dispensation, citing as excuses for a whole litany of selfish, boorish and abominable behaviour, "Special Needs!!!!". Wolf's explanation for how it got to be this way - "people having gotten insanicerated." (p. 158).

This leads Wolf to discussion of services having hired ever more and more incompetent staff: "In fact, they have been scraping the bottom of the employability barrel, hiring the people who are the last step away from unemployability and who sometimes do not even speak the language of those served....[although allowing that]...these people sometimes are good caretakers, especially where body care is needed, but are very poorly equipped to be role models, teachers, trainers, and developmentalists and to foster positive appearance, normal behaviors, good manners, and clear and civil speech..." He goes on, and explains that in his opinion, such hiring reflects the philosophy of service employers that competency development is unimportant, or perhaps that service recipients may not have any growth potential in those areas, and there lacks incentive for services to cultivate these competencies.

Wolf takes a moment to point out the difficulties that become inherent when considering that children have vastly more unactualized potential for the development of competencies than adults do, and therefore, despite the advantage of having more family support, might be expected to command more of the service dollar. The dilemma for Wolf is that many adults are abandoned or in the care of parents who might be progressively losing their capacity to care for them. In my experience, there have been two "generations" at least of adults raised in the care of families - one whose competencies have NOT been developed (but whose care may have been excellent) but there is huge potential, at any age, to develop it. There is also one of people whose parents kept them in the community and have raised them to be as independent as possible, accessing plenty of academic and lifeskill supports and development opportunities, though still requiring advocacy and protective care as well as some relatively minimal supports for basic living responsibilities such as banking, cooking and negotiating social and economic systems. The first group, if abandoned through death or incapacities of their parents or siblings or other such caregivers, absolutely require significant amounts of support, and may take a long time developing, if at all, competencies for independent living, though they have the potential for it. The second group, if abandoned through death or incapacities in the same manner as the other group, may find themselves regressed by the system, as it often cannot address the unique combinations of independence - kind of like the "splinter skills" referred to when describing people with severe specific learning disabilities (such as autism spectrum disorders) require innovative and uniquely flexible accommodations. They will often be "under-accommodated", leading in a number of cases to crisis and expensive interventions to rescue them, or "over-accommodated" at significant expense more than necessary to meet their needs, which often continues and becomes an entrenched phenomenon of the service system. I have lots of experience in this phenomenon, and have observed this tendency over the years, especially in the Ontario scene, following waves of de-institutionalization. I wish Wolf had talked a bit more about this in his 10th point, but I suspect that discussion will be for another day. Knowing what I do about Wolf, this hasn't flown in under his radar!

Wolf's eleventh point relates to public attitudes. I am reminded here of Wolf's workshops, and those of his proteges and colleagues, on the process of "Distantiation", of the march to maltreatment, beginning with the noticing and societal valuation of differences. At some point, I will blog separately on this process as I was helped to understand it by Darcy Miller and Wolf himself in a number of workshops and presentations I attended over the years. Wolf encourages us to ensure that "Unrelenting attention" be paid to public attitudes. If these attitudes turn bad, says Wolf: "this will override all safeguards, including laws, and endanger service funding even more. Here he also points out that this goes far beyond "language policing" (p. 158), noting there is almost no evidence that "the so-called 'people first' rules change anybody's mind content, while a great deal is known as to which attitude change strategies are effective, or even highly effective..." Here he cites a few examples of how this can be done, (but read the PASSING Manual (Wolfensburger and Thomas) for a detailed exposition of this).

Wolf's twelfth point relates to his concept of "deathmaking", and warning that people are even now being "successfully brainwashed" to see this as the answer to many problems. He sums it up nicely in this: "If the very lives of impaired and dependent people are not sacred, and not deemed worth living, how can we expect people to pay out vast sums in support of such persons once they are born and grow up?" Naturally, Wolf goes on in some detail about his opinions on abortion, infanticide, suicide, suicide assistance, and involuntary euthanasia, particularly as it is more and more possible, with every new discovery from the medical community, to diagnose conditions in the womb, including risk for developing disease and disability at older ages (such as Alzheimer's).

Wolf cites himself, in his 2003 monograph The Future of Children with Severe Impairments: What Parents Fear and Want, and What They and Others May Be Able to Do About It (pp. 43-53) to further explore "several of these 12 points" in greater detail.

Wolf closes his exposition of 12 broad strategy proposals aiming at a favorable cost/yield ratio by allowing that there would be additional ways of saving money in human services, and many more again ways to re-distribute and save money outside of human services, which lie outside his scope at the present time. He also remarks about picking battles wisely.

Having discussed these proposed strategies, Wolf enunciates several principles that support the strategies. Some of these are quite familiar to those of us who have followed Wolfensburger's teachings for some time:
1. Solidarity, collaboration, and interconnectedness versus radical individualism - the "we" versus "me" argument. He encourages us to eschew wanting to profit from the hardship of others, and to be willing to carry an equitable burden so that hardship does not fall disproportionately on those who are undeserving of the burden or make convenient targets for shouldering disproportionate burden through weakness or marginalization; 2. Justice - particularly equitability; 3. The principle of subsidiarity, which he explains is that problems need to be "solved at the lowest possible level of social organization" (p. 159) - Wolfensburger opines that "Many of the current societal and human service dysfunctionalities are fruits of this violation of a sound principle..."; 4. Realism - the idea that the strategies are plausible and achievable, which will be necessary for them to "gain ground" - While "Petitions, demonstrations and so forth may save a particular service, ...[they]... do not contribute to cost containment"

In my next blog, I will finish the review of Wolf's article (which next goes into a particular "for instance", talking about the issue of tackling unemployment of handicapped people and Wolf's suggestion of developing more unpaid but valued work.

More on Wolf Wolfensburger's "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources" in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 148-162

2010-06-09T09:12:00.000-04:00

In previous blogs I have written about the first four of Wolf Wolfensburger's broad strategies for giving a "favorable cost/yield ratio" in our field of endeavour (assisting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities). I continue here.

Wolf's fifth recommendation (of a total of 12) is to cut inequitably allocated services in favour of ensuring this goes to those with "similar needs" who get "little or nothing". Wolf may slightly overstate that "Often, it is handicapped people with a lot of powerful advocate figures behind them who get the palaces while their abandoned peers get the hovels" (p. 155), but he is not far off the mark in concept. He goes farther, however, than merely talking about evening the playing field: he talks about eliminating "luxuries" such as renting or owning a whole house; governments "shelling out astronomic sums in order to get the last few residents out of institutions" (p. 155), which "sits poorly with families who had taken care of an impaired person at home, and who were told that they had to do "more with less", while people who were about equally impaired got huge subsidies for community placements" (p. 155). My comments on this is that experience shows that it is sometimes the case that these cuts are made to the "extravagances" of inequitable funding, but it is much more rare to see the "freed-up" funds used for the more poorly (or non-) funded situations. If funders would honour such equalizing there would be, in my opinion, a lot more of it.

Wolf's sixth proposal has to do with the phenomenon that there are examples of services with more and less desirable alternatives. The ability to re-institute a less preferred, but still viable alternative, rather than cut all services leaving nothing in its place, would be preferable. He goes on to talk about a boy with partial vision being assigned two personal aides so that he could be maintained in a regular class. Wolf asks if every child assigned an aide really needs one, and could they not be shared, and "Are there never any suboptimal but still viable alternatives?" Wolf suggests that "Soon, personal aides might outnumber the students in a class". (p. 156). Here Wolf suggests that large classes are better than none at all; segregated [services] are better than none at all; sheltered workshops are better than having no day activities at all; and group homes are better than having institutions revived. Wolf states that "even segregated services can be normalized, normalizing, and social-role-valorizing in many ways". (p. 156)

Wolf points out that "the less preferred alternative may be both less luxurious and more equitable. For instance, there is something grotesque about schools not being able to supply soap and toilet paper, while impaired pupils show up with entourages of multiple attendants, service animals, and animal handlers". (p. 156). Going further still, he decries that impaired people have been enabled to choose the most expensive of several service or living options, and suggests there is nothing wrong with having family and friends bolster and upgrade services (with private funds, of course).

Seventh of 12 suggestions is vintage Wolf, giving high priority to volunteered and "extra-structural" services, services that are not part of the "system" of formal supports and organizations, whether individual or communal. Family, friends, citizen advocates, circles of support are some examples of these. Although some volunteered help is mediated by formal support organizations and by paid workers, such as Citizen Advocacy and Special Olympics organizations who pay staff to organize and lead the volunteer (unpaid) force, and as such fall in between the system and "extra-structural" services. Wolf chronicles the impacts of volunteers and credits them with, among other things, "prying intellectually disabled people out of the service system altogether, and saving many lives", and remarks about volunteers, that "even after their initial volunteer engagement ends, they are often recruitable again later" (p. 156).

After making these remarks, Wolf observes, again accurately according to my experience, that "paid staff supporting volunteers are often the first to be cut. This then makes people angry who want to volunteer but are not well handled. It may alienate them forever from volunteering (Kadlec, 2009)" (p. 156). He goes on to emphasize the importance of supporting these "extra-structural" services and volunteers "as being the only thing that in many instances will be protective of at least some impaired persons when the structures abandon them and/or when societal order collapses, as it did in New Orleans in 2005" (p. 157).

The eighth recommendation made by Wolfensburger is to hold onto at least a modest training and staff development budget, again observing that in his experience these are most often among the first to be cut. He cautions that cutting staff development budgets over too long a term produces "more incompetent staff than one would otherwise", who then become the base level of employee in the organization, so that future new employees get a very low standard of competence as they enter the organization, and lack good role models, mentors and teachers.

Ninth of his recommendations brings out more of Wolf's passion than the others - he says "we should fight to the bitter end" (p. 157) to preserve services which prevent the escalation of services to higher and higher levels of support, and therefore, higher expenditures. He cites as an example home help services which maintain people in their own homes rather than see them escalate to nursing home. He points out that this is a very predictable cut, and suspects that "the nursing home lobby is behind that." (p. 157). Into that example, Wolf also adds respite services and community transportation assistance for people with disabilities, which can prevent (or at least significantly delay) escalation to higher expense services. Wolf cautions that this should NOT mean funding transportation services that serve people who have homes to live in to go to recreational events while others remain homeless or reside in nursing homes for lack of essential transportation, NOR does it mean providing subsidies to families with means, while transportation for the poor is unavailable. Wolf also includes community integration supports for released convicts, which he says "typically cost a tiny fraction of imprisonment costs, save vast sums by reducing recidivism, but are also commonly among the first to be eliminated" (p. 157). He goes on to give examples, where "penny-wise and pound-foolish" (p. 157) strategies are employed, and concludes "curtailing expenses at one level or department of government in a way that increases the expenses of another is either psychopathic or insane", including uploading to federal government - and I would add, in our experience in Canada, downloading to municipal levels of government (p. 157) which merely shifts the onus but is still taking the taxpayer's money, and sometimes, taking more of it than before. Into the "extra-structural" supports and services area, Wolf also discusses what he calls "service multipliers" where 'middlemen' are cut out, and the impact of a dollar of support is "multiplied" by factors which include bringing in other services that are less expensive, volunteer time and effort, and some freedom to work without as many constraints, thereby getting more 'bang for the buck'. His example is of "giving small subsidies to families who will put in a lot of their own time and money to support a dependent family member, thus providing much unpaid service and keeping the person out of expensive service arrangements" (p. 158). He also supports Citizen Advocacy offices as examples of such "service multipliers".

More on this interesting article, including the final three recommendations for strategies, and my own comments and analysis based on my Ontario experience, in my next Blogs.

Part 3 of review of Wolf Wolfensburger's new article on "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, vol. 48 no. 2 pp 148-162

2010-06-03T09:01:00.001-04:00

I can almost hear the "sacred cows" moo-ing as I read Wolf's "series of broad strategy proposals that aim at a favorable cost/yield ratio." (p. 153).

1. cut services with questionable validity or productivity - singling out in particular the "human services crazes" (those who have heard Wolf speak can probably almost hear his residual Germanic accent rolling the "r" in their heads as this phrase tumbles off his tongue - giving the phrase even more salience and making it even more memorable afterwards). "At any one time, a significant proportion of human service consists of the transaction of invalid crazes" (p. 153), which Wolf states arises out of "magical and superstitious thinking" - and suggests Shamanism would be preferable (I suppose, if we had to have one or the other) because it at least is "straightforward". In making this statement, Wolf also tells us that in favouring these crazes, what often gets lost are "valid pedagogies" that have been time-tested, sometimes over hundreds and thousands of years. In this same group are placed activities performed for "non-programmatic" rationales. These are issues that affect the way a service is delivered NOT based on people's identities or needs. Wolf suggests human service providers have been enculturated to believe that if the law, administrative or financial considerations require an action of a care provider, then it MUST be good for the client, and if something is denied or disallowed, then it MUST be bad for the client. How to tell if something is "non-programmatic"? Wolf suggests we think of them as "examples of the big "buts..." "But the law won't let us", "but our funder requires," "but our staff don't," and so on..." - so we ask ourselves, when a "but" comes to our mind, the objection might be because of some nonprogrammatic constraint. (A useful rubric, in my opinion). I used to say that in some organizations I consulted to back in the day, if people would put their clipboards down and actually engage with service recipients, their complaints about not having enough staff would have more currency. Non-programmatic activities are prompted to defend administrative structures, ward off lawsuits, prepare responses ahead of time for what might become service complaints, give justification for administrator time and activities, and so on. They often exist because they have always existed, at least in the memories of those who work in a service. Rarely are they questioned as a significant obstacle to service provision, although almost everyone seems to "hate" paperwork, meetings, and report-writing.

Wolf goes on to advocate for cutting out a large part of individual program planning and even case management. The sharp intake of breath of thousands of employed PLODs (People who Live Off Disabled people) can almost be heard here, where the crickets can be heard chirping and the loon's call from across the lake can be heard like it's right beside me. Although Wolf concedes these activities can be very helpful, in his opinion (and I would agree with him from my experience) "they have become so pro forma and bureaucratized that in terms of recipient benefits, they pay back only a small fraction of their enormous costs." I used to refer to the numbers of people who offered little input while maintaining their employment doing non-functional assistance work as the "uh-oh squad" - like those who stand around wringing their hands after an accident while the paramedics do their work. Wolf allows that the work of case management and individual program planning can continue on an unpaid voluntary basis as has been the case all along with families and volunteers. Spending countless hours filling out paperwork to justify provisions for a child with a handicap, and other examples of "bureaucratism" are cited as more unproductive time spent at a cost that might become unjustified, only in an economy of cutbacks. Wolf comments also that low-validity, nonprogrammatic and other unproductive activities may continue to be funded even while there are people left without ESSENTIALS. Wolf actually suggests civil disobedience in response to costly bureaucratism imposed from above in the federal-state-municipal-funder hierarchies: "One substrategy is to lobby for legislative relief, and another is to practice resistance and outright noncompliance as long as possible." (p. 154)

2. cut the funding of the more expensive operator(s) when there is a choice between two services that are "pretty much the same".
This seems like a no-brainer to me, and it boggles the mind that it would have to be stated. I guess, in New York, there is a very large state system and fewer non-profits than would be the case here in Ontario. Wolf notes that privately run services can change and reconfigure more quickly and less expensively than government ones. I think that Ontario has done well in developing its non-profit sector, however, my observations suggest that the same thinking can be applied within the non-profit sector, where some organizations are well advanced beyond others, and even between the non-profit and private-operator system in some instances, where better service, better responsiveness and less expense can be found in certain experienced "for-profit" operators than in the surrounding non-profits.

3. Get ready for another "sacred cow" to be sacrificed on the altar of cutbacks - Wolf suggests cutting funding for services that are, or come close to being, luxuries. In this he cites examples of questionable use of "service dogs" and the support structures that go with provision of them to people who are neither "blind, deaf or halt". Another example: helping people with profound physical disabilities to climb mountains, go skydiving - planned for from personal futures plans about "dreams" and "visions" and "egged on by advocates and service workers..." (p. 155) Even if they are paid for by raised funds, or private funders, Wolf bemoans the expenditures which he says should be spent on basics for people.

4. Another no-brainer in my opinion - we should cut down on extravagant salaries - which do exist even in human services, mostly in administrative and health care positions. Wolf suggests there might be a desirable side-effect too, if one of the administrators earning such a high salary might quit the field if the salary is cut to a more reasonable level - "then the people served might actually be better off..." Okay, Wolf, tell us what you REALLY think about administrators! Wolf includes overly rich retirement (pension) plans that allow early retirement at close to one's peak earning potential, which he refers to as an "incentive to retire very early and then take on a different job in human services at about the same pay as one's old job, and live excessively from the combination of one's pension, new salary, and eventually perhaps even a second pension on top of Social Security income..." (p. 155). A parting shot from Wolf on this one - "Exorbitant incomes in any field are particularly scandalous if the service recipients are overwhelmingly poor, as is the case in our field, welfare, and a few other fields and services..." (p. 155)

More on what Wolf would "cut" to survive in an era of shrinking resources in my next Blog.

Part 2 of my Musings on Wolf Wolfensburger's article "How to Comport Ourselves..."

2010-06-01T21:18:00.000-04:00

In his article in AAIDD's "Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities", volume 48, No. 2, pp 148-162, Wolf predicts what others too have been saying: "One day, the reckoning will arrive...In essence, our progeny will pay for our profligacy."

He then paints a picture of how, faced with want, taxpayer revolt, unavailable public money, etc., we can expect to see a number of human service problems: service and related advocacy pitched against each other, competing for remaining funds in an ever-shrinking pool available. This may stoop to advocacy that in making the case for one cause, implies deficiencies in that cause's justifications for funds, or even outright attacking other causes, seen as competition. This can have the effect, in a more and more jaundiced public eye, of tarnishing the whole area and all its individual causes. I have previously commented on this with respect to the animosity in the autism area of human service between groups that practice a "let it be" philosophy, or a philosophy that autism is only a part of the normal human spectrum of individual variation in thinking and intelligence, and groups that practice a "let it be cured" philosophy, or one that wants to invest money, effort and time into various biomedical and psychoeducational efforts at "eradicating the disease". By fighting with each other so publicly, they confuse the public, and let people "off the hook" from offering support where it is needed. Wolf's example is of the area of cancer research, where "the lung, bladder, brain, and other organ-centred cancer organizations" (in the U.S.A.) "are at each other's throats, trying to take money away from each other, as a result of which funding becomes arbitrary and irrational." (p. 151) which Wolf refers to as "let the devil take the hindmost..."

Wolfensburger also reminds us of the abstract of his 1992 plenary address to the Association, published in the February 1994 journal, then called "Mental Retardation" (p. 19), which he accurately suggests "probably set a record for brevity for the journal: "The world is going to hell in a wheelbarrow, and this is not going to do retarded people any good". For those who aren't "in the know" Wolf has always refused to "politically correct" his language, and has continued to use the term "mentally retarded" and "retarded", even now. He has given his reasons in full for this, and although many disagree with him on this very point, he does argue well, and nobody has ever accused Wolf of failing to support and champion the rights and interests of people with developmental disabilities. The man who, along with Bengt Nirje, gave us (in North America) the "principle of normalization", and who now advocates "social role valorization" for people who are at risk of any form of marginalization, can be quite stubborn!

In addition to reminding us that he cautioned us then, nearly twenty years ago, about the coming collapse of banks, credit systems and insurance, as well as private pension funds, and about the increased "deathmaking" he decried, he also admonished us not to trust government because "it habitually lies". He also coined a new term, "insanicerated", meaning "made crazy and insane" which he applied to "people of the culture of modernism, including academia, scholarship, the research culture, the professions, and professional and scientific organizations" - such that "unpleasant truths are not and cannot be dealt with..." He says everything except maybe 'I told you so' - to his credit, of course. EVERYBODY hates that!!!

In his "pre-mortem" on our society, Wolf does comment on those who might be spared, at least in the beginning. This includes services that are totally or substantially subsidized by other bodies (he refers primarily to federal programs), such that parts of the economy are "making money" from them; programs that were generated in response to court decrees or lawsuits might be protected; programs that are protected by strong advocacy lobbies with many voting constituents - which does not usually include advocacy lobbies within intellectual and developmental disabilities - but he cites AARP (American Association of Retired People) and the hospital and nursing home lobbies; "services that thrive on the anxiety of people who still have money"; those who are paid for service to their clients and who have some form of workforce protection.

Never one to simply decry how bad things are, Wolf does offer some suggestions for thinking "rationally, strategically, and ahead of time about (a) what to propose to our funders, and (b) what we can do that is in our power to get the most service value for the dollar." He says we "need to develop a cost/yield mentality" be prepared to ask ourselves tough questions, develop a mentality of parsimony ("holding costs down while still meeting the most pressing needs"), and "need to evolve a relatively united front, with shared strategies, or the government will play one party against another, and beat both down". (p. 152)

In my opinion, Wolf is absolutely correct in predicting that if we fail to do these things, "cuts will be made capriciously by ignorant, partisan, irrational and unstrategic parties, and any number of patterns of cuts can leave vulnerable people far worse off than if the same amount of cuts had been made rationally". (p. 153). Such has been my experience, and I concur with Wolf when he says the cuts will be largely decided by administrative levels of the bureaucracy who do not really know the service sector, or who have very little clinical training or experience. Such has also been my experience. Real people with real needs often get hurt at times like these, and so do the champions who attend to their needs in the face of little to no support, financial or otherwise.

In my next blog, I will review Wolf's proposals, and while I am reading and reviewing his article, I am getting some ideas of my own, for the Ontario situation, that might meet many of his criteria for parsimony, collaboration, united front advocacy, shared strategies, and stretching government and other funder dollars further.

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Thoughts on Wolf Wolfensberger's "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 148-162

Almost the last instalment of my review of Wolfensburger's "How to Comport Ourselves..." in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 148-162

Next Instalment of my review of Wolf Wolfensburger's "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources" in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 148-162

More on Wolf Wolfensburger's "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources" in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 148-162

Part 3 of review of Wolf Wolfensburger's new article on "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, vol. 48 no. 2 pp 148-162

Part 2 of my Musings on Wolf Wolfensburger's article "How to Comport Ourselves..."