Shifting Power and Control, Training Book; Monadnock Developmental Services

Shifting Power and Control
By Brian Remer
With a foreword by Donald Shumway and Mary-Ellen Fortini

This book features activities that can be used to teach support staff, administrators, families, service coordinators, and people with disabilities about self-determination and its application to their lives and work. Every chapter is full of great ideas about how to teach the concepts of freedom, support, authority and responsibility in a lively, challenging, and fun format. Emphasis is on learning through participation, sharing, reflection, and experimentation. All activities have been developed at Monadnock Developmental Services in Keene, New Hampshire, site of the first self-determination initiative by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Every activity has a clear objective, time frame, list of materials, background explanation, step-by-step procedures, discussion questions, and reproducible pages for participant hand outs. In addition, notes for training facilitators accompany each activity to explain why certain techniques are used and to make it possible to teach other people how to lead the learning activities. Suggestions about how to modify each activity for different audiences or situations are also included.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One
Change: The Only Thing That's Constant
The Stuff of Dreams
Self Determination: In the Eye of the Beholder
Self Determination: What are the Implications?
The Future: Sometimes It's Worth the Stretch
Confucius Says, "Change is in Your Fortune"

Chapter Two
From Care Taking to Co-Creating
The Changing Role of Support Staff
What's Your Role? What's Your Goal?
The Characteristics of Change Agents
Becoming an Agent of Change
What is Your Model Modeling?

Chapter Three
Individualized Budgets in Action
Walter Comes Home
Orange You Going to Let Me Have It?
Interests and Positions
Help Me, Rhonda
Negotiation: Practice Makes Perfect

Chapter Four
Making Decisions, Making a Life
Decisions: Nail 'Em Down
Decisions: Use Your Head (or Heart?)
Teaching Decision Making: What Would You Do?
DreamQuest

Chapter Five
Increasing Community Involvement
Defining Community
Skills for Community Involvement
Don't Talk to Strangers
The Cocktail Party
Commitment to Create Community