Yesterday I attended the final session of a six month ‘leadership development series.’ The participants in this training series included human service workers and family members of people with impairments. Over the six months, they attended approximately 14 days of various trainings. The training that began the series, and that helped to set the overarching context for it, was a four day leadership level SRV workshop. Participants had to apply and be interviewed for acceptance into this program. It was funded by a regional office of the state Department of Developmental Services. Each participant was assigned a mentor, typically someone who had graduated from the series in previous years.
During this final ‘capstone’ session, series participants were invited to reflect for 5 minutes or so on their experience in the series, what was most important to them, how did they grow and change through the process, examples of change efforts, and so on.
Of the 21 presentations, 17 mentioned studying SRV as one of the most important parts of the series. The most common SRV ideas that were mentioned included the explanation of societal devaluation, the framework of social roles, greater access to the ‘good things of life,’ consciousness raising, and image enhancement. I heard several examples of support for valued roles and the positive changes that the roles made in someone’s life.
This was a great illustration of the ongoing relevance, power and utility of SRV theory–in this case, for human service workers and family members. It is also a great example of structural support for SRV training and implementation.