The world of disability advocacy boasts its own language, for better or worse. In some instances for the better, hurtful labels to describe a type of disability have been replaced by words that do not yet have a pejorative connotation. In other cases, however, terms of common usage, such as “choice,” “inclusion,” “integration” and “community,” have been incorrectly redefined to mean only certain choices or certain places according to the user’s ideology. In these instances, some individuals with disabilities have suffered due to a lack of individualized care in favor of ideology.
“We feel strongly that people with autism and/or developmental disabilities have the right to choose where they receive services, with the help of their family members and legal guardians as appropriate,” says Huso. “Unfortunately, prevailing public policy has taken the ‘person’ out of person-centered planning favoring instead an approach that attempts to push everyone into small residences without any regard to individual need or choice.”
VOR believes by serving people according to individual needs and choices it is more assured that they enjoy greater happiness and a higher quality life experience – whether in a family home, small home or specialized facility setting. The needs are diverse – one size does not fit all.
“‘Inclusion’ has become more about pushing people with profound needs out of specialized care or denying access (deinstitutionalization), rather than focusing on meeting unmet human needs,” said Huso. “As a result, vulnerable people are truly suffering and are far more isolated in unprepared settings.” http://www.vor.net/about-vor
More experiments have confirmed that nature–being in, looking at, smelling–is physically healing in a number of ways, as revealed in the July 25, 2016 issue of Time magazine, page 24. In “The Healing Power of Nature,” Alexandra Siffilin writes that for years the Japanese called it “forest bathing,” or shinrin-yoku, and it was believed to lower stress, but it hadn’t been proved. Now a number of experiments have shown positive results. If you’re stressed and your office doesn’t even have a window in it…what do you expect? I had heard previously that just taking time to look at one of those large nature posters can boost your immune system.
I’m having difficulty deciding whether events are one or the other. Perhaps both? Today I experienced what I would judge to be a minor S or S. I’ll tell you about it. I was at a friend’s house last night just engaged in a kindly bit of gossiping, I guess you could call it. I was trying to remember the name of a man who had visited our poetry group once and invited us to another regular poetry reading venue in town. I told her his name would probably come to me on the way home, bu it didn’t. Although I am not a member of Phi Beta Kappa, I was reading “The American Scholar” tonight –it had been in a free bin or something–and the article on the last page brought Will Dewess’ name to mind. The article’s author was William Deresiewicz. Wait–don’t go away, there’s more. Another name I couldn’t think of was very frustrating. I could remember the book he wrote (The Birth of Consciousness in the Bi-Cameral Mind), but not his name. Again, that was during my visit last night, and tonight while reading the same issue of “The American Scholar,” I came across a discusson of his book and his name–Julian Jaynes. Now that isn’t a great example of S and S, but I’m going to start noticing them and sharing them. The journal was a real gold mine, since it also contained some interesting info for another post on the Our Shadow Selves page. (See next posting)
cabin there. There was one cabin available, and I was given the landlord’s phone number. The year was 1976.
NANMYKEL.COM 