When articles like the recent New York Times, At State-Run Homes, Abuse and Impunity, are published, the impact does not remain a local or state matter as the scope of a frontpage article in the Sunday Times reaches across the globe. Rather, it serves as a wake-up call to all service providers that support people with disabilities to take inventory on their practices and strive to do better. Like so many past exposes, from Dorothea Dix’s of Poor Houses in the 1840s to Geraldo Rivera’s of Willowbrook in the 1970s, reminds us again of society’s failure to adequately protect fellow citizens who by virtue of disability require its support. Just as Ms. Dix’s work led to the creation of state institutions and Mr. Rivera’s to the deinstitutionalization of such, the most recent expose will undoubtedly prompt calls for systemic reforms. Those, like the reforms of the past, will undoubtedly fail for the simple reason that they tend to focus on systems, and not the person, either the person who requires support or the individual who directly provides it.
With broad brush strokes we invent and reinvent “models of care” without much attention to the wishes and abilities of the individuals who require support; and we too frequently staff them with people with insufficient knowledge and commitment to providing the support desired and needed. Until the nexus of the individual requiring support and his/her support provider becomes the cornerstone of program development, systemic reform efforts will continue to be fruitless.
The National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP) is dedicated to supporting individuals with disabilities to achieve their life goals by promoting the development of a highly competent, professional direct support workforce, a workforce that is guided by a Code of Ethics and credentialed as being proficient in nationally validated community support skill standards. Like its Code of Ethics, the leading tenet of which is “My first allegiance is to the person I support; all other activities and functions I perform flow from this allegiance,” these support standards are person-centered and rooted in the needs and abilities of the person receiving support. All of us who have been given the immense responsibility to provide services to those with disabilities have an obligation to adhere to these standards. Whether you're an administrator with 30 years experience, or it's your first day on the job as a direct support professional,there are no exceptions.
Regardless of what ever systems are developed, there will continue to be exposes like the recent Times’, finger pointing, increased oversight and calls for reform to keep bad things from happening again. But a professional direct support workforce, trained in competency-based standards and held to a high code of person-centered conduct will keep bad things from happening in the first instance.
Joe Macbeth