We have tried it all and everything is a refrain I often hear at team meetings, concerning service for indivduals who live with disabilities. What does it really mean? Everything may mean in the eyes of the service provider all known means to address a so called problem, or to address a skill development need. Or, it could mean we have tried everything we can think of in our limited imaginative realm.
Human services is not always a science, it can however often require all that goes into other forms of art. Therefore we may conclude that there is an Art to helping others. It is a creative process if we allow it to be as practioners of helping those in need or even better, those who in the truest sense, seek our services.It's our job to create a picture of what success may mean to the people we work for that may help them actually meet a goal that is not a projection of our own wishes, dreams and needs, but of those we serve.
As outdated as it seems the notion of empathy is still not utilized as a starting point to help others. It's a place to start to paint our picture or map to success for those we serve. Empathy is not easy to arrive at as we often confuse it with sympathy and still it is hard to know what another person's experience is or may be. We make a critical mistake whenever we as helpers tell those we help by saying I know how you feel, well, we don't and we never will, yet we can try to understand what they may experienced by putting ourselves as deeply into that experience as possible. We need to go deep within ourselves to place ourselves in their shoes by asking questions such as what would it be like to have staff watching me all the time and commenting on everthing I do.Sometimes people we serve have been conditioned overtime to please staff and all those in positions of authority over their lives. We need to free ourselves of control thinking and really commit to freedom for those we serve.
A number of years ago I got into trouble with the power people in my organization when I put a poster together to inspire staff to think freely, and in turn, free those we serve from our limited creativity and need for control. The poster said simply "Free the ____ eigthteen." Well the big guy summoned me to his corporate crib and asked me if I was saying we we were holding the clients captive. At the time I said no, I was just trying to help our staff see that the more we free those we serve from formal human services, the greater success we and those we serve will realize. I do believe that the primary goal in all aspects of human services, is to help people become free and need less and less of our services. That signifys to me a meausre of success for all concerned.
So when we say we have tried eveything and nothing has worked, we are really saying we don't know what to do and we have imprisoned ourselves by limiting the possibilites within our own minds. Think freely, apply it to those who supervise you and more importantly those individuals you serve.
Serve On!!!
JBG
So true.
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