What Permanency Means to Individuals with Developmental Disabilities
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: achieving permanency is our top priority for every person we work with. But what does achieving permanency actually look like? There could be as many answers to that question as there are people who need help from agencies like CFCS, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy question to explore. In that spirit, we’re starting a series on the blog called “What Permanency Means…” where we’ll explore what permanency means for the many different people CFCS serves. Today, we’re looking at what permanency means for the individuals we work with in our Developmental Disabilities Program (DDP).
In our Developmental Disabilities Program, we serve individuals who the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS) has determined to be eligible to receive support. The support someone receives from DDS can include access to help from DDS service coordinators, public benefits, community activities, assistance identifying and receiving therapeutic resources and receiving financial assistance. Additionally, these individuals may receive support from agencies such as CFCS, who help with communicating and coordinating with their schools, day programs and/or medical teams, in assisting with the financial support received from DDS, and in providing support on issues related to their disability.
Our DDP clients can be any age, from young children to senior citizens. They have a range of abilities, and they live throughout the Greater Boston area.
We work not with only clients, but also with their families, assisting them as they navigate the system of public services.
Our DDP team envisions the idea of permanency as a spider web. If a person is a spider, each supportive relationship that they have in their life is one strand of the web. The more support and connections someone has in their life, the stronger their web is. Our permanency goal for all of our DDP clients is to help them strengthen their webs.
The more connections an individual with developmental disabilities has, the more independent they may become. Increasing and improving these connections increases the client’s ability to make decisions about their life, to set goals, to advocate for themselves and to take ownership of their services and supports.
We have also observed that the more supports a client has in their life – the stronger their web – the easier it is for them to adapt to changes in life. Any change can be difficult for anyone, but change may be especially challenging for our DDP clients. When they don’t have many supports in their life, a major change can leave them feeling lonely, isolated or without the necessary confidence in their ability to advocate for themselves and their needs.
We work with our clients to achieve their permanency goals by helping them brainstorm, identify and connect with as many supportive people in their life as possible. Inside our clients’ homes, this usually includes working with their immediate family to identify ways their family can continue to support them. Outside their homes, we look at the immediate community around our individual client to identify prospective supports, people with whom the client could connect. Prospective supports could include neighbors, old classmates, extended family members or coworkers who may be willing and able to provide support in some capacity.
The more supports a client with developmental disabilities has – the stronger their web – the easier it is for them to adapt to changes in life.
When we begin this work, we usually have our clients identify all the people in their lives they feel connected to: family members, friends, neighbors, formers classmates or teachers, friends and paid providers. For many of our clients, initially, the majority of their connections may be close family members and paid professionals such as their teachers, medical teams, therapists, respite providers or day program staff. We want to help our clients bring more people into their inner circle by identifying these relationships and strengthening them. Paid professionals, while providing important services, are unlikely to be able to provide permanency and a lifelong connection, given their roles. Paid professionals, which include CFSC case managers, will not be in a client’s life forever, whereas family members and friends can make that long-term commitment.
Permanency work also involves talking with our clients about how relationships with family members who are already present in their lives might be strengthened. Perhaps a client’s parent and older brother are great supports, but the younger brother is not. By working with the client, we can determine if they would like their younger brother to be more involved and if so, how. The next step would be to engage the younger brother and determine what support he believes he could provide. By engaging the client, their parents, the older brother and younger brother, the client’s support system can be increased and strengthened and the family can be more unified.
One of the essential components of our permanency work is knowing our clients as individuals. This includes knowing who is in their life, identifying who else could be in their life and listening to them as to what supports they want and need, both now and in the future. This is the client’s life. Our role is to listen, to assist and to support.
Although the DDP client population might seem distinct from the populations we serve in our other five programs, the permanency goals are the same: to create and maintain a strong supportive network, the metaphorical spider web. The people in our clients’ lives – the strands of the web – must be consistent and constant, providing help in times of hardship, celebrating in times of joy and offering support as our clients set goals and work towards them. Regardless of who we are, what age we are, or where we live, we all need people who make our lives brighter and more enriched.