Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Community Integration
How important is community integration in day programs? How many people spend 5 or 6 hours per day shopping and recreating during the day 5 days per week? How many clients want to be in the community that much?
This is a delicate balance. Functional skills training means that the training takes place where the skill will be used… and very often, that means “in the community”. You can’t learn to buy socks at K-Mart by practicing with plastic coins in your facility. You can’t learn to wait patiently in line at the bank by talking about it in your facility.
On the other hand, how many times can you go to K-Mart each week? If you live in a large metropolitan area with a variety of shopping opportunities, it’s probably easier. But if you live in a small town with only a K-Mart – or worse – in a smaller town with only a single store – how many times can you go there before you create behaviors centered around boredom with a single choice?
How much time do clients want to spend in the community? In a recent annual survey at our facility, the results showed that 10% of our clients don’t want to go into the community on a daily basis. 18% of stakeholders (parents, care providers, etc.) said they believe we spend too much time in the community.
How do you go out in bad weather? We live in Humboldt County where it rains in the winter… a lot. People still go shopping in winter… but they don’t spend all day shopping 5 days per week.
Where do you eat lunch when many clients bring a sack lunch from home? Do you and your friends regularly take a sack lunch into McDonalds? I would guess not, but it’s what we regularly do because there is no other choice when it’s raining.
And now, the state of California is offering a staff wage incentive to programs who are at least 51% community based. So now it’s about the money and not consumer choice? What happened to person centered planning? Why isn’t the money available to provide the best program for each individual client in the program instead of a shotgun ‘community based’ approach?
I suddenly feel the need to state that the opinions stated here are those of myself and not those of the agency I work for.
I’m also curious how other agencies handle being community based for all consumers. I’d love to hear ideas from others.
The good news is, with the SNAP Curriculum you have many opportunities to provide community based training for a myriad of issues. Each curriculum is about 10 minutes long and is designed to be addressed in a community setting. How handy is that?
This is a delicate balance. Functional skills training means that the training takes place where the skill will be used… and very often, that means “in the community”. You can’t learn to buy socks at K-Mart by practicing with plastic coins in your facility. You can’t learn to wait patiently in line at the bank by talking about it in your facility.
On the other hand, how many times can you go to K-Mart each week? If you live in a large metropolitan area with a variety of shopping opportunities, it’s probably easier. But if you live in a small town with only a K-Mart – or worse – in a smaller town with only a single store – how many times can you go there before you create behaviors centered around boredom with a single choice?
How much time do clients want to spend in the community? In a recent annual survey at our facility, the results showed that 10% of our clients don’t want to go into the community on a daily basis. 18% of stakeholders (parents, care providers, etc.) said they believe we spend too much time in the community.
How do you go out in bad weather? We live in Humboldt County where it rains in the winter… a lot. People still go shopping in winter… but they don’t spend all day shopping 5 days per week.
Where do you eat lunch when many clients bring a sack lunch from home? Do you and your friends regularly take a sack lunch into McDonalds? I would guess not, but it’s what we regularly do because there is no other choice when it’s raining.
And now, the state of California is offering a staff wage incentive to programs who are at least 51% community based. So now it’s about the money and not consumer choice? What happened to person centered planning? Why isn’t the money available to provide the best program for each individual client in the program instead of a shotgun ‘community based’ approach?
I suddenly feel the need to state that the opinions stated here are those of myself and not those of the agency I work for.
I’m also curious how other agencies handle being community based for all consumers. I’d love to hear ideas from others.
The good news is, with the SNAP Curriculum you have many opportunities to provide community based training for a myriad of issues. Each curriculum is about 10 minutes long and is designed to be addressed in a community setting. How handy is that?
