's ul Staffing

[Guest guest]

Yesterday we had ’s Annual Staffing at his house. The first thing

his home director was to show the Sign Book of ’s signs I put

together from Carol’s idea. She was impressed and has 3 copies. The

meeting focused on all ’s accomplishments during the year he has

been in residence there and the 5 months he has been in their workshop.

So good to hear the good things. This is not to say he hasn’t had his

problems but it has been mostly over this need he has for the newspaper.

His targeted behaviors on his behavior plan are hitting and throwing.

The thing that is good is they many times are able to defuse the

situation and calm down before he gets to that point. Two areas

that had been in his past are spitting and swearing. These had been

identified by Barbara Doyle, Consultant, as being precursors to the

hitting and throwing but didn’t always happen. Now they are happening

and agitating one of the other guys and teaching another one that awful

f word, uses the finger also. They are going to begin more

specific tracking to see if they can get a better handle on it. I had

said when does something like that I would sign wrong behavior so

that will be within the plan. Sure it will lessen or pass away.

He has been sleeping better, and not sleeping at work as reported from

his last agency. The staff all like him at home and work and really

work hard to help him. The one who has been working with him to keep

the newspapers picked up in his room said he has been so great. He will

now have his room picked up in the morning and give her an old newspaper

before he gets his for that day. She said we saw his room that day and

he did it all himself. Miracles do happen.

One of the guys is going to begin to get Sports Illustrated weekly and

they were wondering if this would present a problem for . We will

see. Always interested how something might affect . We will

probably have to get him a subscription.

So much in all this mix are the staff who work with the person and show

them the respect and dignity that we would all want in how we are

treated.

didn’t attend the staffing so when he came home he was all excited

to see us and he knew he was going home with us after the meeting. You

should have seen him coming in with a canvas bag full of newspapers, a

plastic bag of newspapers, and a plastic bag with an empty box.

Sometimes this restrictive repetitive highly focused interest (that old

autism sticking its head up) with the newspapers gets to be too much,

but hay, if it’s not hurting anyone and it makes him happy, fine with

me. The nice thing is they are all so tolerant of this both at his

house and work. You should have seen going around hugging

different staff when he came home. You can just see he is so happy

there. They have a new program called Next Generation Program or Full

Life Program and all the guys have been signed up and they will be

taking to different programs there.

The agency website is at HYPERLINK

" http://glenkirk.org/ " http://glenkirk.org/ in case anyone is interested.

Louise Mom to 43, DS, HI, ASD (diagnosed at age 41)

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