Tuesday, February 24, 2009
How to Teach Daily Living Skills to Adults with Developmental Disabilities
Alert! This is a shameless hustle for my new book. But then, this is my blog, so I guess its OK to plug my books.
How to Teach Daily Living Skills to Adults with Developmental Disabilities has just been published.
This is my attempt to be heard about how we support adults with developmental disabilities. I'm sorry, but I can't just show up to work every day and not think about what we are doing and how we are doing it. I also know it doesn't do any good to just sit around and complain about the system as some "experts" make a habit of doing.
If you have read any of my blogs, you know I am not terribly politically correct. I do not believe that all adults with developmental disabilities (regardless of need or desire) need to be immediately placed in an apartment of their own and to be placed in a job in the community. I do not stress over labels. I do not believe in "mall therapy." I do not believe in "experts." I do believe that if we pay attention to the client, and we work to support them in what they want for their life, then we can make a difference in that person's life. But you, as a staff person, must have some idea what you are doing in order to provide the support needed. We don't necessarily have a "bad" system of service delivery. We do have a bad system of staff training in many agencies. This doesn't make them a bad agency or bad staff people. It makes them an under-trained agency and staff people. We can fix that. You can fix that!
So, my book shares some of my views about those subjects as well as covering a wide range of basic principles used in supporting clients. I do not claim to be an expert in this field. I have about 17 years of experience and all I am doing is offering my views as based on my hands-on experience. I don't have a fancy college degree. My experience with "experts" has been that they really don't know clients very well and they tend to place everyone in the same box while decrying people who put clients in a box. I'm sure that is very therapeutic for them (the expert) but I'm not sure how helpful it is to the client or to you as a staff person or parent.
So I wrote down my experiences for you to look at and determine for yourself if any of the principles may apply to the clients that you support. I cover the basics of behavior (what is a behavior?), assessing behaviors, writing plans, instructional processes (does your staff really know how to utilize a prompting hierarchy?), reinforcement, behavior management tips, data collection, ethical issues and a few other topics. I tried to write it in a "conversational" tone rather than like a textbook. Textbooks are boring. I tried to bring a little humor to the subject, too.
All I'm asking people to do is think a little bit.
The book is available from Amazon.com or any dot com bookseller... or from me.
At Amazon, just search "Books" for How to Teach. You don't even need to type in the whole name of the book.
How to Teach Daily Living Skills to Adults with Developmental Disabilities has just been published.
This is my attempt to be heard about how we support adults with developmental disabilities. I'm sorry, but I can't just show up to work every day and not think about what we are doing and how we are doing it. I also know it doesn't do any good to just sit around and complain about the system as some "experts" make a habit of doing.
If you have read any of my blogs, you know I am not terribly politically correct. I do not believe that all adults with developmental disabilities (regardless of need or desire) need to be immediately placed in an apartment of their own and to be placed in a job in the community. I do not stress over labels. I do not believe in "mall therapy." I do not believe in "experts." I do believe that if we pay attention to the client, and we work to support them in what they want for their life, then we can make a difference in that person's life. But you, as a staff person, must have some idea what you are doing in order to provide the support needed. We don't necessarily have a "bad" system of service delivery. We do have a bad system of staff training in many agencies. This doesn't make them a bad agency or bad staff people. It makes them an under-trained agency and staff people. We can fix that. You can fix that!
So, my book shares some of my views about those subjects as well as covering a wide range of basic principles used in supporting clients. I do not claim to be an expert in this field. I have about 17 years of experience and all I am doing is offering my views as based on my hands-on experience. I don't have a fancy college degree. My experience with "experts" has been that they really don't know clients very well and they tend to place everyone in the same box while decrying people who put clients in a box. I'm sure that is very therapeutic for them (the expert) but I'm not sure how helpful it is to the client or to you as a staff person or parent.
So I wrote down my experiences for you to look at and determine for yourself if any of the principles may apply to the clients that you support. I cover the basics of behavior (what is a behavior?), assessing behaviors, writing plans, instructional processes (does your staff really know how to utilize a prompting hierarchy?), reinforcement, behavior management tips, data collection, ethical issues and a few other topics. I tried to write it in a "conversational" tone rather than like a textbook. Textbooks are boring. I tried to bring a little humor to the subject, too.
All I'm asking people to do is think a little bit.
The book is available from Amazon.com or any dot com bookseller... or from me.
At Amazon, just search "Books" for How to Teach. You don't even need to type in the whole name of the book.
# posted by John @ 8:08 AM 
