 Abledon Air, major sponsorship was given by Green Mountain Support Services, empowering neighbors with disabilities to be home in the community. Also sponsorship was given by Washington County Mental Health Services, where hope and support come together, and Champlain Community Services of Vermont. Hello and welcome to this edition of Abledon Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the differently able. I've always been your host, Lauren Seiler. I'm Lee Seiler. And on this program our sponsor is joining us. Before we introduce that, we'd like to thank our sponsors. Big thank you to Green Mountain Support Services, Washington County Mental Health, and Champlain Community Services of Vermont. And we'd like to introduce your name, please. I'm Brenda Donley from Green Mountain Support Services. And we are talking today about person-centered thinking skills. And can you explain a little bit about what that is? Sure. Person-centered thinking skills is a worldwide, it's used worldwide all over. It's used in Africa. It's used in the U.K. It's used here in the United States. And what it is is it was developed by a group of professionals who supported people with developmental disabilities. And they were worried that people with developmental disabilities might lose choice and control over their lives. And so, yeah. So what you're saying is when the person gets older they lose control? Or exactly what do you mean? So what they found is that person-centered thinking skills work for all humans, not just people with disabilities. So they were worried that people with developmental disabilities initially would lose choice over where they lived, what they wanted to do, how they wanted to be supported about, you know, all of the things that were important to them. The concept relies on really gaining a deeper understanding of the people that were supporting whether they have disabilities or not. And understanding what is important to that person, what is important for that person, and how to help somebody achieve good balance in their life. So what you're saying is without person-centered thinking skills or that particular program, we would go back to or we would be told where to live, how to live, and that type of thing? That might, I mean, there would be some worry about that. Well, 39 states still have institutions, but... Yeah. Yes. Yes, that is my understanding. And this is a way, so there are specific skills. There's a two-day workshop that we can teach people to use specific skills, and what people have found over time, that there's this global community, and this is a curriculum that was designed for that audience, and what people have found out. It works for people everywhere. People, I use the skills myself. There's a whole set of skills that we can use to help us get a deeper understanding of the people that we support, and how we understand the things that are important to them. And important too are the things that, you know, the places you want to hang out, the people you want to hang out with, the communities in which you want to live, the activities that you want to do, things that you want to collect. And then there's important four, because that institution life that you talked about in systems did really a good job of addressing the important four, the health and safety. People were kept safe. They made sure that they got medications and doctor's appointments. But when you focus just on that important four piece, that you lack... There's not much quality of life, and so it's helping people find balance, which is ever changing for all of us. Exactly. What do you mean by balance? So the balance is if I were, for example, if I only focused on, I'll use a personal example, if I wanted to watch my weight, and my doctor said you have to watch your weight, and I was only getting support on, like, you can never have the potato chips, and you can never, you know, these are the things, these are the things that you need to do to, for your weight control, and for your health. And people that were around me and supporting me only focused on that part of my life. Then I would be missing out on the important two, which is to be very social. And sometimes I want the cupcake at the party, right? And sometimes I want to go out and have a beer with friends, or those kinds of things. And if I don't have that, there's no balance. That important four side is so weighted down that the quality of my life is impacted. And it's not the life that I would choose. I will have this program, or this part of the program through your agency, been in fruition. So we, I have been, I've went through the credentialing process with the state, and I'm a credential trainer in teaching these skills, and the class that the two-day workshop, and Green Mountain Support Services really been trying to focus on these for at least the last three years. We've really tried to have, we understand that person-centered thinking is a value, but these, what I teach are understanding why it's important, and how we can better support people living full lives. Because from what I understand, Green Mountain Support Services, what you're trying to do is, in people's minds, get rid of the institutionalized living. Absolutely. Brandon State School, horrible. In New York, there was Willowbrook State School. 6,000 people in one institution, nothing going on except what they call warehousing. And now, fast forward to 2019, you know, more independence. Absolutely. But okay, in that case, what happens if a person needs a nursing facility at a certain age? So that- How does that work within your- So that is an interesting question to ask me because I'm actually the program manager for what we call our adult family care program. So this works for all humans. So as we age, we're not able to live as independently, but we still need choices about the settings in which we want to live. There's nursing homes on the greatest places. Right, right. And so what we offer at Green Mountain Support Services through our adult family care program is an option for the aging population. It's a huge resource because when somebody is faced with not being able to live independently or they have a stroke or something that they're no longer to live that life that they led, when you enter into a nursing home facility, life kind of stops. You know, you don't get to go to your church, maybe, and you don't get to go to your hairdresser. An adult family care home through our agency and other agencies in the state, it's a- Under the umbrella of choices for care. But we could also do private pay. We work with a good match. We use person-centered thinking skills to develop a good match for- You don't want to go into a nursing care facility. You have the choice over that. Where would you like to live? What are the kind of people that you want to live with? Do you want pets in your home? Is it important that you get to church so that people can choose a community and live in a community and do live the- You know, they can have 24. They may be eligible for 24-hour nursing care level of care, but that can be provided by a care-fever in a home. There's a difference between a nursing home and a nursing facility. Example, my parents were, before they passed, they were in- There's a wonderful place called Atria, which is all over the world. It's a nursing care facility. They had- They had their- Their dining, three beautiful three meals. The world-class chef, they had their own apartment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They still had their independence before they passed, but so from what I understand, until people are able to- Until people- How can I rephrase this? When people get older, they still have- If they have their faculties, they still have their independence, no? Yes, but they may need assistance, and that's what we want to achieve. We want people to live as full and independent life as they can, so when they move into a home, if they choose not to be, and it sounded like your parents had a wonderful assisted living facility that really met their needs. Yeah, $4,000 a month. Yes, yes. It was very expensive. But it sounds lovely, and it sounds like they had a good quality of life there. What we try to do is understand what people need, and that important too. What are those things that are important too? If you can't afford $4,000 a month, we have to come up with something else. We try to understand what a person, how a person wants to live, so that they have some power and control over that. If somebody is not able, you mentioned that they didn't have their cognitively, they had confusion. Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's or something. Then another one of the person's center thinking skills we use is to get a deeper understanding of what someone needs and wants for some ports. It's called a relationship map or a relationship circle, and we fill that out, and so it helps us understand who are the people that are important to and know the individual best when the individual's decision making is compromised. Do you want to ask a question? Do you want to ask a question? Go ahead. How long has the program been around? Person-centered thinking skills, this curriculum has been around a long time. It's been used all over. I have only been a credential trainer for about three years now. The credentialing process took me about a year to complete before I was a certified credentialed trainer for the state. Now, how long does it take? You said it takes a year. It took me about a year. There's a process. I have a mentor that started me out in the process, and I did a lot of studying of the skills. I did some presentations, and now I'm certified to be able to present and do consultation with folks around person-centered thinking skills. What does it take a social work background to do this? You have to have it. It doesn't necessarily. What we do in the two-day workshop, which I have one coming up, we have one coming up at the agency at the end of this month, but what we practice is it doesn't, when you take the two-day workshop, it doesn't certify you to be able to teach it to other people. There's a lot more pieces to that, but what it does give you is some practice that's an interactive workshop, and we practice some of the skills in the workshop, and we pair up, and we practice them with each other before we go out and use them. It doesn't take a social work skill set to do that. It takes somebody who can value the importance of this and is willing to to work through and practice with the skills. Okay. As far as around the world, you said that this has been around the world, so how does that work worldwide then? There is a, and you can go to learning. You can access some of it. It is a community of it's called tlcp.com. I think you can go to the website, and there are folks from all over that share this passion about giving people some power and choice over their lives, and it's just the learning community for person-centered thinking, and there is a website, and people connect. There are two in this area that I go to. There is a workshop, a gathering of trainers in Portland that actually happens in June that I am not able to make. It's like this month that just didn't pan out for me in Portland, and then there is one in the fall in Toronto that I do try to go to, and it's where people can come together and share their experiences. What is the difference between this program and other independent living situations? Because you want people to live independent as possible. Some people might be afraid to live independently, but what is the difference between this program and, say, how other states are dealing with independence? What is the difference? What this does is this person-centered thinking skills help us support somebody. It's not a separate program, but it enhances and contributes to the quality of supports that somebody that wants to live independently is getting. Give examples of supports that they might be able to get in the home through this program. They can work with somebody through persons that we understand what's important to somebody, and we can figure out ways through planning to put those pieces in place for somebody. If they want to go to painting class, if that's important to them, we can then inform the planning and support process where we can say, you know, there's this group that meets in Hardwick, and there's some painting there, and we can make connections. The whole idea is that people have our valued members of their community. Without being taken out of their community? Right, yeah. That we help people make connections to the things that they want to do. It's not the differences in other states. I don't know. Is that me as a professional and somebody coming in for supports through our agency? I don't get to decide what they need and what they get. We work with them to get an understanding so that they get some choice and control over the services that they receive. So no one is really taking things away from them. They're just helping them be part of their own community. Yeah, some good presence to contribution stuff that they become engaged in their community. And that benefits our communities too, right, is to have very diverse, everybody has gifts that they can share and person-centered thinking skills help us identify what are those gifts that can be shared and what is that person interested in and how can we support them with getting there. It includes some dignity of risk because, you know, we might, you know, if somebody comes to me and says, well, you know, I want to be an airline pilot and I'll be like, oh gee, I mean, part of person-centered thinking skills working with somebody is being honest about what you can and can't do. I would have to say somebody, gee, I'm not sure how to go about helping you with that. Let's do some research. But it's not making false promises and not giving false hope. It's about being honest. It's an intentional honesty with somebody that you're supporting. I'm going to ask this question because I ask it to one of my guests. Sure. What are the misconceptions around people with special needs when people first meet them? I think that it's, I don't know if it's a misconception. I think that people do not necessarily know how to respond, right? We've been taught, I've been taught as a youngster, don't stare, don't, you know, and I think that people need to understand that everybody is a person and we should be going up when we want to meet somebody. Go up, say hello. People are just, we're all just people, right? And so I think that I grew up in a time where it was like, don't stare, don't be avoidance. Instead of, it would have been- Well, you can't get this job because you're different. Right. Everybody has a gift and everybody adds to the richness of our communities. And my work, I try to say, you know, go up and say hello. I, there, people have interest, I've met somebody that I really like and wheelchair, you know, it doesn't mean that they can't go out and have a beer with me. It doesn't, those, there, people are still able to do all those things and to not avoid and and put in like things like, no, I don't think they can do that, but rather think about what people can do and the gifts that they can share with you. Do you want to ask any more questions? Okay, so I'm going to ask this other question. When we talk about like years ago and how people's thinking was with people with special needs, right, 50, 60, 70s, 80, even now, people are afraid. Mm-hmm. If Green Mountain Support Services helps people live independently as possible, maybe help find an apartment, someone or so, because I know in group homes or if it was a group home situation, you have to get the community board, say so, you know, and then there's a situation where not in my backyard, I don't want a person with a special need there, I'm afraid, right. Do you or your team work hand in hand with this person and then go to meetings, oh, this person is not going to cause any problems or how does that work within the the thinking skills situation? So we don't do any, we don't have any zoning, none of our homes are considered group homes, they're considered community care, community homes, and we never place, we have a, we contract with a private shared living provider who can provide the supports that are needed and they, everybody gets their own bedroom, but it's sometimes it's their own bathroom and everything, but there's no more than two people that are needing supports to a shared living provider, and so it's not considered a group home, but one of the things that we would be strong advocates for, this person can contribute to our community, and we work to figure that out. Because, you know, there's still that little wincy, wincy, one percentage, one percent, oh, like if a person with mental challenges and, or a person that's dual diagnosed, let's say. Yeah. You know, let's say a person has two, three college degrees and has held employment, but people are afraid to let them in there. There's this whole thing that we, yeah, no, and that is a, that is unfortunately, that is still a reality in 2019. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be, it shouldn't be, you're right, and one of the things that, you know, people tend to see somebody with a disability or some mental health issues that are clearly happening for them and already think about, one, I'm going to, I'm going to avoid that, or like we need to help them and we need to fix them, and that's not the way we should be going about things. Well, not fix them. Right, but. If a person is having a mental health issue, like example, my wife, PDSD from World Trade, she's going, she's doing what she needs to do to help herself. Right, but she knows what that is, and I as the professional don't get to say, here's what you have to do, right? Exactly. And that's what's, what's different about using person-centered thinking skills, is that we don't look at, at a person as being incapable. We work with people to understand their strengths and where they want to be, and that balance of important to and important for, about keeping safe, because, you know, if you only, you asked me about an example of, give me, what is that important to important for look like, and I gave you about the weight on the flip side of that, if somebody only has the important to, if I am only eating cupcakes and having all of those sweets and not doing any exercise and only doing, you know, what I want to do, what is important to me, but it doesn't address any of that I'm not healthy and the important for, then the balance, the scale is tipped. And I may not have a very long, good quality of life. And that's the whole thing about person-centered thinking skills, is that we work with an individual, you get to decide what is important to you, what is important for you, and then we try to find that balance. And those scales are always tipping, but the idea is, is that the person is in charge of, of, of what they, how they want to live, which involves, again, some dignity of risk. You know, we can do informed decision making where we can say, okay, so you only want to eat the cupcakes all the time. Here's what might happen. And we educate people about that. But ultimately, we don't have the power of a person to make them make those changes. We have to work with people and figure out how best to support them in achieving that balance. What happens, and this is, again, might be a small percentage. What happens when you're working with somebody, and the situation you put them in doesn't work out. How does that work? Do you find them another? We do. We would, we would certainly, and that, that has happened before, where we feel like somebody, oh, this might be a really good match. And then we find out that, and we talk about one of the person-centered thinking skills is, is routines and rituals and routines. And it talks about things like that we have to pay attention to. One of the powerful skills I use in helping people understand how important it is to pay attention to that is, I do a morning routine. There's some activity you do a morning routine. And then we pass them around. So details like, do I grind my coffee beans, those kinds of things. And I show people how important it is to pay attention because we pass the routines around. And your morning routine, before you get out the door for your day, could be very different than mine. And so what happens is sometimes if we don't pay attention to those kinds of things, we put somebody in a living situation where it's like, I like to sleep till 10, and you like to get up at 5.30 and start the day. It's not going to work long term. And so sometimes things like that come up, or somebody likes country music all the time, and they like to play it loud. If we don't pay attention to the person that we're moving them in with, and they like rock and roll, and they only put it on from 9 to 10 in the morning, it doesn't work. So we try to pay careful attention to the matching. Because when we don't, and even when we do sometimes, there is not, it doesn't work. And so we have to work on finding another shared living placement that better meets the needs and is a better match. No, another thing. So you keep on going back and forth. Let's say, I mean, this might come up where you find somebody a shared living provider, right? That person doesn't work out. Three or four strikes, what happens then? The person can't be homeless. They can't be homeless. We do have some crisis in transition house that we try not to use. And sometimes somebody will do a temporary placement until we find a better match. You know, we work hard for that. Just moving back and forth might not be good for a person. It's not good for a person, which is why we try to be careful right at the onset. And one of the things in the person centered thinking skills, there are also problem solving skills that we can use. And there are things called like a four plus one, or like a what's working and what's not working that we can go in and just kind of use this. Everybody has a voice and perspective about things that might be some common ground that could change so that the living situation doesn't have to change. Does area play into a thing? Like if a person wants to be in a city or country or farm or something like that? It often does. Somebody might say that they can only live in Burlington. And what we like to try to do is if the person that we think characteristic wise that has such a strong, you know, we think that would match personality wise, if they live in Morrisville, we might say, would you just be willing to meet them and see the home? And they may say, oh, I could live here. Or they may say, nope, I only need to live in Burlington. And it could take longer for a home development. Yeah, because if a person says to you, okay, I'm going to classes at UVM, I would like to be in Burlington for that, specifically. We would work hard to try and develop a home in Burlington, which can take a little bit longer and somebody might be in a temporary placement until that happens. I will share, however, that we did have somebody who had a particular church that they wanted to attend. But the perfect match at that time for a shared living provider was out in, I think it was, I don't know, was it Barton? It was far away from Berlin. It was a good hour ride to that church. Did they have a car? And the individual didn't. But our shared living provider, what we said is this is really important to this person that they get to this church. Are you willing a couple times a month to make sure that they can, yeah, we'll drive them there. And so they were able to go. It was a long, long drive. But a couple, and maybe it can happen every week, but it satisfied. For a person says, I must, you know, I have a business at the farmer's market. I must get to a farmer's market, this particular farmer's market. But the farmer's market is like an hour. Yeah. So if that can't be negotiated with a shared living provider, then that might not be the right match. We always try to choose the community of their choice. But in Vermont, that's, it's, it's challenging. Our transportation system doesn't They're working on that. They're going to do more transportation, but it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. No, I think I live in Jeffersonville and there are two, two buses a day that can get you from Jeffersonville to Burlington. So it is, it is a challenge. But if that was important to somebody, we would certainly try to develop a living situation that was in the area that they chose. It wouldn't necessarily stop us from saying, you know what, we don't have one there right now, but let's meet, you know, this provider and see what you think of them. Because maybe there's a farmer's market in Morrisville or wherever or Waterbury that you might like just as well. Let's do you want to try it? So tell me one thing. What is the age ranges? For person, center of thinking skills, it works for all humans from infancy to lifespan. Oh, sure. For person, center of thinking skills. Well, I want to be green mountain support services primarily serves adults with developmental disabilities and our aging population in somebody with brain injury. So, but person center thinking skills can work with, you know, if somebody I've seen them used in our learning community, they have been used with maybe a mom just had a baby and she stayed home with the baby for six weeks or three months. And now she's faced with I have to go back to work and my baby like who's going to take care of my baby and they develop what we call in person center thinking skills. We develop a person, a person centered description and sometimes a one page person centered description that talks about what is important to this person. What is that what do people like and admire and how best to support this person. And she actually created this description. And when she was interviewing child going, you know, sending her her new baby off to a childcare situation, she was like, these are the things you need to know. These are the things you need to know about my baby about how to suit the baby when the baby's fussing. You know, they like to be rubbed on their back and they don't like to be rubbed on their tummy or I mean, so yes, right up through infancy, from infancy right up through that's what that they found. Originally, it was designed to the curriculum was designed for people with developmental disabilities. And what people quickly found out is this is for for all humans. So okay, so in terms of again, so in terms of the world, each part of the world is different. So this person center thinking skills, does it adapt the rules and regulations to where the person is living? Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't pretend to know about how it's used in, you know, say Israel, Africa. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know the answers to that. But I know that there are people that use these skills and are part of this global learning community to make sure that people are best supported in a way that they choose to be supported. Okay. So where are the websites that the website that people can? So you could go to its tlcp.com. There is a membership dot com or dot org. I believe that's a dot com. And then there is a huge Helen Sanderson's associates does Helen Sanderson associates is there's they publish books and host a lot of the trainings and you could just google Helen Sanderson associates. They do a lot of work around this schools. There's, you know, a lot of information on the web about that. If you if you google Helen Sanderson Association, it will take you to a lot of there'll be a lot of rabbit holes you can fall into. Okay. As far as free mountain support services. So conjunction with green mountain support services. How long has you've been doing this for three years? I've been a three-month support services itself. Yes, I worked a full-time employee there and program manager. And I have have been, you know, I went through the credentialing process. And so that is one of my roles at the agency is to support folks with what is your other roles again. I have a team of service coordinators that I supervise. I work around our emergency on-call system at the agency and just provide a lot of staff support, sign, you know, individual service agreements and I'm part of the leadership team there. Okay. So give us a website again for green mountain support services. gmssi.org. And where what number can people call for services? 802-888-7602. Okay. Last question. Future goals of this program and at the agency? Sure. So we'd like to grow our programs in the amount of the number of people that we support, particularly our aging population, so that we are helping manage, you know, Vermont is getting older. And so that we are a resource. I noticed that it's more, it's more becoming elderly, well, it's in the elderly, you know, people are retiring here. Yeah, we're getting older. And the other thing in conjunction with that is I want to spread the word about these person-centered thinking skills and get more people trained and practice using them because it does make a difference. It really can make a difference in somebody's life. You know, being independent is, is vitally important because if you're not independent and you let this state, oh, okay. Well, here's, here's another thing I want to ask. Suppose if someone's family is not around anymore, mother gone, father's gone, the family not really disappeared, but and then there might be certain family that doesn't want to be bothered, right? And do you guys step in as guardians of that person? We are not guardians for that person. If that person might need a guardian, we could certainly advocate. Is there somebody you know that can help you make decisions? Is it a case where somebody needs a public guardian? We don't play, we're advocates and not guardians for somebody. Okay, but because you're teaching somebody to be independent. Yeah, it's, it's not that. It's that we, you know, we don't, if we were to be a guardian for somebody, it really would be a conflict of interest for somebody that we're supporting. How was, how so? Well, because we, we feel like, so let's give a piece. That's a bad question. I'm sorry. Is it a, is it a bad question? No, it's not a bad question. I'm going to try and give an example that, that helps it. So I am a guardian for my husband's adult son. He does not live with us and we work with a team of people to decide that, but in Vermont they recognize this conflict of interest because if he were to live with us, right now somebody can be paid for being a shared living provider for him. They work with a team, we're the guardians, we're a part of the team, we work together. But if he were to reside with us, a guardian cannot be paid for providing care for somebody. And so there's, there's lots of little pieces to that. What do you mean, pay? Well, how, so, how does that work with pay? And if, if somebody was a shared living provider was for somebody that was a part of our program or that might have some, a waiver or might be private paying, there would be a difficulty of care payment and that's based on a lot of different things. And a parent cannot be that person for somebody because it is a conflict of interest because when you're thinking about services and supports, there's, there's a team of folks that do that. In person-centered thinking skills, we talk about who are the people that we need to listen to. How, how does the individual, because there's, one of the skills too is how does the individual communicate? Because not everybody uses words to communicate, right? And so that's another- Yeah, then there might be some language or something. It might be body language. And so it combines with that relationship map I talked about, which is who are the people that know the individual the best? And how does this person communicate? And when they do this, it means this. And so do we understand that they are pleased with what's happening or displeased? It might be behaviors. So when we think about all of those things kind of combined, we're, we, we work with teams to do that and we, we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we have the power over what happens for that individual. We're advocates and not guardians. Well, I would like to thank, I would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of Abledon Unair before we end. For those that want to find out more about Greenmount Support Services, you can contact the following number, 802-888-7602. That number again is 802-888-7602 or go on their website at www.gmssi.org. That's gmssi.org. And can you give me the other website again for the So, and can I add that we also have a Facebook page for people who like Facebooks? You could, you could look up Greenmount Support Services in Morrisville and find our Facebook page where we post things too. And the Learning Community website is TCLP, the Learning Community for Person-Centered Practices, TLCPC.com. And then Helen Sanders Associates is another one and I don't have a specific website for that, but if you put that into Google or then you will come up with lots of avenues to explore. Well, thank you again. Thank you. For joining me on this edition of Abledon Unair. Let's put an end to this edition of Abledon Unair. I'm Lon Siler. I'm Lon Siler. See you next time for the next exciting edition of Abledon Unair. See you next time. Abledon Unair's major sponsorship was given by Greenmount and Support Services, empowering neighbors with disabilities to be home in the community. Also sponsorship was given by Washington County Mental Health Services where hope and support come together and Champlain Community Services of Vermont.