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.

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