Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
‘The tug of war over Hart Island’
The 18 July 2021 NY Times includes an article entitled ‘The tug of war over Hart Island.’ A mile long, Hart Island is in Long Island Sound and is part of the Bronx (New York, US). Hart Island is still used as the ‘potter’s field’ for the city, with over a million New Yorkers buried […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: addiction, homeless, island, isolated dislocation, prison
Easy Street
Easy Street is the name of a simulated environment with a purported goal of rehabilitation, and is used in a number of programs, such as hospitals, rehabilitation centers and other medical settings. Easy Street environments are often quite expensive to install. The following videos include ‘tours’ of Easy Street simulated environments: The videos, and the […]
In: Uncategorized
Imagery and drug addiction services
The Sunday NY Times (4 May 2014) included an article entitled ‘Heroin’s new hometown: On Staten Island, rising tide of heroin takes hold.’ It is a sad and difficult article about the awful effects of addiction on: those who are addicted, their family and friends, as well as their particular communities and society overall. It is worth […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: addiction, imagery, Social Role Valorization, SRV
Group size matters
This 2014 op ed in the NY Times relates to the Social Role Valorization (SRV) theme of competency enhancement, in this case, as related to the role of student. It examines ways that group size (class size) can enhance student competencies and provide greater access to the good things of life, including access to higher […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: competency enhancement, group size, PASSING, Social Role Valorization, SRV
Role of server or friend?
One of the clarifications offered in introductory Social Role Valorization workshops and texts is the distinction between the role of server (whether paid or voluntary) and the valued social role of friend. Servers may indeed be friendly to the people they serve, but as long as they are in the role of server, they are […]
Franklin Armstrong in the Peanuts cartoon
The 5 April 2020 edition of the NY Times included an obituary notice for Harriet Glickman. From the article: “Ms. Glickman was a former schoolteacher in California when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, shocking the nation and heightening her concern about what she saw as toxic racism that permeated […]
NY Times Magazine article ‘E-jail’ by Ava Kofman
A 3 July 2019 article in the NY Times Magazine entitled ‘Digital Jail: How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt’ by Ava Kaufman compellingly illustrates the concepts of heightened vulnerability, and of non-programmatic factors, as described in Social Role Valorization (SRV). Note also the example of a private for-profit human service organization. From the article: […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: heightened vulnerability, non-programmatic
‘Bedlam on the East River’
The NY Times published a book review of ‘Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad and Criminal in 19th Century New York’ by Stacy Horn. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/books/review/damnation-island-stacy-horn.html The review is worth reading and has lots of SRV lessons that would be worth reading and discussing (e.g., as part of an SRV discussion group). The island was called Blackwell’s […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: island, isolated dislocation
homelessness in Delhi
The following 18 January 2016 NY Times article entitled “Desperate for slumber in Delhi, homeless encounter a ‘sleep mafia’ ” would be worth studying from an SRV perspective. It describes the social devaluation, wounding and heightened vulnerability of homeless people in Delhi, India. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/world/asia/delhi-sleep-economy.html Tweet
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: heightened vulnerability, homeless
Fencers
According to a recent BBC news item, young men and women jailed in Senegal are taking classes in fencing once a week. BBC news CNN news Many elements of this story illustrate aspects of Social Role Valorization and PASSING, such as valued roles in the domain of leisure, competency and image enhancement, positive expectations, relevant […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: good things of life, PASSING, prison, SRV