Betsimistic

Optimism can be a difficult commodity in many areas of life these days.  In fact, the measurements of the confidence people hold that things will improve are at their lowest known “rates” in the US these days.  But we still go on, doing our work, living our lives, and connecting with others.

I have recently had the chance to conduct a number of orientation workshops introducing newly hired human service workers to the work they will be doing.  Many of them will be working directly with people with disabilities, and most had just met those people in the days before the workshop.  It was very interesting for me, as I often don’t get the chance to work with people in the role of “staff” until they have been around for awhile.

Times have changed from the heady days of the 1980s and 1990s, when Pennhurst, Philadelphia State Hospital, Embreeville Center, Eastern State School and Laurelton Center were closing here in Pennsylvania; when “Person Centered Planning” was the new hope for people to get the good life; when each person leaving the institution and starting a new life was experiencing liberation, and we alongside them.   When the reinforcement schedules and token economies of  the early days gave way to trying to understand who people are, and why people do the things they do in the context of what they have been through in life.

It was easy to awaken people to the challenge in those days – the challenge was clear.  People with disabilities at Philadelphia State Hospital were in unacceptable circumstances – we could see it, we knew it, and we  had a vision of what could be. That vision was worth working towards, even if it seemed impossible to achieve.

These days, it is not so easy.  The segregation and isolation that many people with disabilities face today is one that is harder to spot, and often softened by kind service workers, attractive environments and benevolent agencies.  Many people with intellectual disabilities born in the past 40 years have avoided institutionalization so far, and have been nurtured within caring and loving families.  The predominent and horrific roles of animal, object, vegetable, garbage and menace which prevailed in the big bad institutions have eased into the more palatable roles of eternal child, and, most commonly, the role of lifelong human service client. The influence of these “less worse but still harmful” roles in contributing to a life of  wasted time and narrow possibility are often lost on all of us.

I am not by nature an optimistic person.  One of my mentors has referred to the attitude of being “cheerfully pessimistic”, and I think I tend to hold to that. The title of this blog relates to a (hopefully) affectionate nickname one of my colleagues has given me, if that tells you anything. I did, however, get a burst of “headiness” in the last few weeks, when confronted with several groups of  brand new employees, many of whom have had some rough times themselves, and have not always been treated well by employers and perhaps others.  Throwing a few ideas to the group and watching people begin to wake up to the ideas was a gift.  Not everyone, but enough that I could see.  As the morning went on, you could see emerging realizations that the idea of big societal forces at work in our own lives matter to all of us, that the work they have been asked to do is powerful work that affirms the potential for each of us, that all of us can be students of history and learn from it. I could see a few people wake up from the  “boring-new-employee-orientation- just-have-to-endure-this-at-least-they-give-us-lunch” mindset and  come alive, and leave just a little hungry for more.  I could see a few people work towards incorporating some ideas  they had never encountered  before, and a sense that they wanted to know more.  It is hard, despite myself, not to think that some people, maybe just one or two, who may have been casualties of the “straight and narrow” service worker path of “taking care of,” minding and supervising, and “getting with the program” might connect with their work and the person they are serving in a deeper way.  That makes me positively hopeful for the possibility.

Betsy