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Acknowledgement of Scott Whitley |
| October 14th, 2008 under Health, Household, Inspiring Stories, Mental Health, News, Residents. [ Comments: none ]
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I applaud Ryn Gargulinski of the Tucson Citizen (Arizona) for covering the story of Scott Whitley. So often our mentally ill citizens only appear in the newspaper when they have committed a crime. This year’s recipient of the 3rd annual Daniel Moreno Recovery Award, is Scott Whitley. He’ll receive his award on Friday at the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona’s 25th anniversary dinner.
Daniel Moreno was diagnosed as bipolar in 1989. He then spent the next 17 years in what he called a roller coaster hell. The illness led him to a suicide attempt in 2005. Today his recovery is doing so well he will be proudly accepting his award and acknowledgment for the hard work he’s done. Whitley credits his recovery to a combination of four factors: support, education, hope and medication.
His support comes from peer groups, friends and NAMISA ( National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona). The education comes through NAMISA and reading one of his favorite authors, bipolar psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jameson. It took time to discover the right combination of medications that worked best for Scott.
Before his successfull recovery he was hospitalized, couldn’t keep a job, was unable to maintain a relationship, and was estranged from his mother. That is all changed for Scott Whitley. He was even able to be his mother’s caregiver before her death.
As group home support staff we are the ones that can advocate for our residents to make sure they are provided with every opportunity to be successful in living with any mental illness that they have. In the words of Scott Whitley “It’s just like diabetes or high blood pressure, It’s an illness, not a character flaw.” Our residents can not only live successfully with their mental illness diagnosis, they can help others like Scott has, with group home support staff’s help.
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Disability Ambassadors |
| September 6th, 2008 under Residents. [ Comments: none ]
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So often residents are protected from the uncomfortableness the community might have towards them. When we are with them, we can help them deal with it. Especially higher functioning residents, who might not always have group home staff around or may end up with group home staff that is uncomfortable should be given skills to deal with the members in the community who are uncomfortable. Group home staff can teach the group home resident how to teach the community how to be more accepting. Each resident can become an ambassador for disability awareness and/or their specific disability.
When in the community, and a group home resident goes about doing things in a “different” way and then notices that someone may be looking, he or she can speak up and say something like “I have CP and it takes me a little longer, but I can do it myself”. It puts a face to the label-CP. It focuses on ABILITY in the label-disability.
Group home providers and day programs can even create a little course to train the residents who are interested in becoming a disability ambassador. A printed out card, button, and even t-shirts (”Proud Person with CP”, “I am a disability awareness ambassador”, or “Ask me about CP”) can give credibility to their title.
We have moved away from the time of hiding people with disabilities in institutions, now it’s time to move forward and stop hiding them out in the open when in the community. There is the fear they will be treated differently if their disability is revealed. Maybe we have created that fact by trying to hide their disability and preventing the community from having the opportunity to learn about the
REMEMBER-never break confidentiality and reveal a group home’s resident’s disability in the community unless you have their permission.
Most residents won’t do this on their ownA group home support staff can begin to teach a resident to teach others about acceptance.
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Teaching the Resident to Teach |
| September 4th, 2008 under Residents, Support Staff. [ Comments: none ]
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So often a group home resident is dependent on others for learning skills that will add to their quality of life and increase the group home resident’s independence. Sometimes the staff that is helping a group home resident isn’t familiar with them enough to teach them in a way they understand. For higher functioning residents, they can be taught how to teach others how to teach them. It is empowering to the group home resident and opens up many new learning experiences from new people.
I will use an example of how I had helped a young man who had trouble learning. He didn’t seem to be getting much out of the hours he spent in school. He struggled with a couple basic skills-reading and counting money.
First thing I did is try to figure out “how” he processed information. I observed him doing things he normally does around the house:
- Cooking
- Cleaning (or avoiding cleaning)
- Helping
I saw that the following contributed to him being successful with a task:
- It was broke down in small manageable steps
- He was shown what to do
- There was overseeing, encouragement, and instruction during the task
- He was self-motivated
I built his self-confidence:
- He was interested in who worked each day, so I used the posted schedule and we worked on reading. He got lots of positive reinforcement. I would ask him who worked and he gained confidence because HE had the answer instead of being dependent on the group home staff to tell him.
- With his weekly spending money we would use real money to show equivalents. I had laid next to each other the following: a dollar, four quarters, and 10 dimes and told him it was the same amount. I loved the look in his eyes when he “got it”.
Taught him how to teach
- Referred to the above learning experiences and reminded him how he smart he is.
- Explained to him that he learned best by doing and using what he learned.
- We talked about how not everyone will know how to teach him what he wants to learn, but he can teach people how to teach him.
- I then gave him some suggestions on how to help others to teach him, like “I’m smart and can learn this if you show me how it is done.”
I wasn’t able to work with him long enough to find out if he was learning more at school. I had found it sad that he spent so much time at school and wasn’t getting basic skills for independence even though I saw he had the potential. In the group home he was more interested in learning new things.
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