The service structure of DADD can be compared to a pyramid – a service pyramid, as we call it. The entire pyramid rests on the foundation of our brief mission statement, “Empowerment with Compassion and Superior Service”. This simple statement is the Polaris – the guiding star for the relationships and interaction we maintain with our clients and should always be in the back of our minds as we interact with clientele and when we discuss or plan activities with the people we serve.
The definition of empowerment in the context of our work is self-reliance – to enable our clients to possess the ability to do things for themselves to the highest possible degree.
Compassion, by definition suggests a sympathetic awareness of others together with a desire to assist them; or a relationship between persons wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other. Compassion includes attempting to understand and respect how each person we work with views the world and their place in it. These attributes are vital as we approach our work and interact with our clients. Having pity for our client’s misfortunes on the other hand or placing them on a “special people” pedestal and catering to them really don’t fit into our definition of compassion. We want to understand and appreciate a person’s challenges but build on their gifts and strengths – not weaknesses.
Superior Service means exactly that, interacting with our clientele and performing our work functions in the highest most professional manner.
This standard of work – empowering our clientele with compassion in a superior way, is carried out at DADD through an array of service structures designed to effectively and efficiently meet the needs of our clients. Those structures are the programs such as the Activity Centers, Adult Development Centers and Supported Life Services, in the terminology of the state system in which we work. And while providing service within the legislative construct of these programs has been an adequate way of providing group instruction and activity, the system is by its nature inflexible when attempting to take people as far as they can individually go.
For many years the state’s developmental disability service system has steadily been moving in a direction it calls “self-determination” where individual consumers can take greater control of their lives by picking and choosing activities as well as mentors, coaches and instructors or attendants from where and when they may to better fine tune and personalize the services they receive. The state system we work in from the legislators to the people in the trenches has long recognized the importance of more individual choice but the very nature of the system’s logistical and financial construct has made it difficult to provide “individual only” service. We not only welcome the legislated self-determined concept but embrace it wholeheartedly.
At DADD we have long respected the capability, individuality and choice of the people we serve and within the somewhat rigid service delivery system of the state have encouraged our clients to dream big, to consider going beyond the constraints of the system and having, doing and being more and doing so according to their own desires.
So, although our clients attend “programs” which provide services designed around Individual Program Plans one might easily surmise that the Individual Program plans really look more like Group Program Plans because many people participate in the same activities at any given time of a day. This is one flaw in the system in which we work. In spite of this challenge, at DADD we encourage and carve out special time, attention and activities for people whose personal goals require us to “stretch” the boundaries of the construct in which we work to assist our clients to live their dreams.
At the pinnacle of the service pyramid – above the services and programs, the resources and domains, the strategies and methods, tools and equipment, the training, etc. which completes the service pyramid rests the most important piece of this intertwined structure… the people we serve. This entire “system” is based upon and exists only for them. That is why our clients are stationed at the top. Without our clientele there is no DADD. Therefore it is imperative that we “serve” our clients with respect and with a caring but urgent attitude – in a partnership of success – that by so doing our clients become more capable and self-reliant people with increased possibilities for meaningful and purposeful living.