Saturday, March 17, 2018
The SNAP Curriculum
I wrote the Specific Natural Activity Program (SNAP) curriculum for my own staff, initially. The agency I worked for was basically a babysitting service for adults with developmental disabilities, and that drove me nuts. When I became a Program Director, I started writing the curriculum to help my staff talk to our clients so that we could begin to actually start teaching some daily living skills. What is the curriculum?
It's a tool for staff to use to engage adults with developmental
disabilities in a conversation in over 200 daily living skills topics. And let
me point out that my staff (I'm retired now) was great at including all clients
in the conversations - even non-verbal folks and those people that some
considered "too low functioning" to "get it." Let's let the
clients show us whether or not they "get it."
It isn't
a lecture series. It's used to talk about a range of topics during activities
that you normally do during your day with your clients. The curriculum is a
great way to teach new staff what issues our clients face on a daily basis and
it gives your clients some continuity of message. You don't have to worry about
hiring a new staff and having them come in and tell clients something
completely different from what staff has been saying.
I don't
know about your program, but we used to say that staff turn-over was on
Thursdays. It seemed like we were always hiring... and it was always young
people who had never met an adult with a developmental disability before. The curriculum gives you a base of information that is consistent for your clients. Staff are expected
to add their own life experiences to the discussions.
I said that the curriculum is used to talk to clients during
activities. Would your staff currently think to talk about:
Social Skills – Taking Turns, Following Rules, Patience,
Dealing with Rejection,
The Art of Conversation,
Communication – Teamwork, Building Trust
…while playing board games with your clients? Those topics all relate to playing games as well as life in general
Most
folks I hired would have never thought to talk about that variety of subjects
during an activity. And clients often absorb new ideas easier during an
activity than they do in a "classroom" type setting. Talking about
strategy during a game of checkers is a good way to talk about personal
responsibility... what is checkers? It's a game of strategy. What is strategy?
It's a way of thinking ahead... like I heard it might rain tomorrow, so maybe
today would be a good time to get out my raincoat so I know where it is in the
morning so I don't miss my bus looking for it.
I often
heard staff at the end of the day suddenly exclaim, "Oh, that's
Robert!" and I knew they were looking through the curriculum and had just
gotten an idea of a topic that would be really helpful to review with a
particular client. We mostly did the discussions in groups so as not to
target or embarrass any particular client, but we also did 1:1. Whatever works
for the client!
And the
curriculum is in small segments so you can talk about the subjects in your
facility or while out in the community. A great time to talk about how to read
a receipt is while a client is holding a receipt for something they just
purchased.
You can read all about the curriculum at www.snapcurriculum.org and you can order it and see my other disability resource books at www.mosscanyon.com.
