video of Wolfensberger workshops on human service history
Check out the video of Dr. Wolfensberger teaching about human service history. Great project. If you’re in a university or corporate position and can purchase these training videos, I highly recommend them. Good material that can be used in lots of different ways.
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Community development and social integration…or segregation?
This 18 Feb 2010 news item describes a meeting between delegations of a community development group and a segregated sports club in Dubai, with the stated purpose “to strengthen the standards of social services and integrate those most vulnerable in society.”
It is interesting that a community development group would get involved with a human service program. At the same time, the sports club seems from the article to be a segregated one.
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Role terms are everywhere
We all hear, read, speak, use and think in role terms everyday, whether we are conscious of role theory or not. In a single recent issue in Time magazine, I counted 380 references to social roles. (OK, OK, I was a bit bored that day!) Most references were to valued roles, in domains such as work, family, leisure, sports, education and politics. Only a handful (under 20) were to socially devalued roles, such as migrant worker, pimp, detainee and slave. Some of these roles were repeated multiple times in one article.
This exercise can be the basis for good teaching opportunities. You might ask a class to go through a newspaper or magazine, looking for role references. If you are a supervisor in a human service program, you could do this with the staff you supervise, as a way of brainstorming about valued roles. And so on. Exercises like this can really help us to become more aware of the breadth and depth of roles in society.
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Elders die in recent heat wave: Example of heightened vulnerability
The Washington Post reported that 32 people between the ages of 60 and 90 died in a recent heat wave in Brazil. One of the concepts of Social Role Valorization theory is called ‘heightened vulnerability.’ What does that mean? Some groups of socially devalued people are at greater risk of bad things happening to them, and these bad things will likely hurt them more than the average citizen. That is heightened vulnerability.
You or I might feel too hot or get thirsty quicker during a heat wave. For vulnerable people who are societally devalued, however, the same heat wave can be life-threatening, as just happened in Brazil and has happened many other times (such as in France a few years back in 2003, when thousands of elders died). Perhaps they also have asthma, cannot afford air conditioning, are a bit forgetful and so don’t drink enough water, or are so lonely and isolated that no one checks in to make sure they are okay. That is heightened vulnerability.
Many experiences can exacerbate a socially devalued person or group’s heightened vulnerability, such as loss of a loved one, a sickness, a rude comment from another person, having to move, losing a job, and so on. You or I likely have enough ‘resources’ (such as friends, family, security, money, home, work, etc.) that we can weather a sickness, a rude look or comment, moving our home, even something as significant as loss of a spouse. However, what for most people (of valued social status) might be an inconvenience or even a real hurt can be, for a societally devalued person, like the straw that broke the camel’s back, making a vulnerable person even more socially devalued, and can be a devastating wounding experience that they are not able to recover from.
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SRV on the web (so far…)
Here are some web resources to help you stay up to date on Social Role Valorization:
•Social Role Valorization website run by John Armstrong in Australia
•Knol on SRV and Normalization by John O’Brien
•SRV group on Facebook
If you run across others, please let me know.
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All things SRV
We will use this blog to regularly post news, analyses, videos and links, training updates, resources for further learning, questions, and so on, relevant to Social Role Valorization (SRV). We encourage you to subscribe to the blog and to comment on our posts. The more comments and online discussions, the more we can help deepen our understanding of SRV on behalf of vulnerable people.
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