Online SRV conference
We look forward to the First International Social Role Valorization Distance Conference: SRV in the World, which starts tomorrow with a preconference workshop on Social Role Valorization, and then on Wednesday with the first plenary session.
https://socialrolevalorization.com/srv-conference/
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SRV News and Reviews No. 1
The SRV Implementation Project is pleased to announce a new publication entitled SRV News & Reviews.
https://indd.adobe.com/view/ade820f6-0e75-4437-b9ce-d78d7e39f9dd
We are very thankful to our advisory board members for their work in starting this new effort. The purposes of this periodical include analyzing phenomena that have Social Role Valorization (SRV) relevance; as well as fostering study of and dialogue about SRV theory, training, research and implementation, and about PASSING. It will include reviews and occasional articles plus a regular column, and will be published twice a year. We encourage sharing and discussion of the content as a way of promoting further study and implementation of SRV.
SRV News & Reviews is published under the auspices of The SRV Implementation Project (SRVIP) with the sponsorship of Shriver Clinical Services. The mission of the SRVIP is to confront social devaluation in all its forms, including the deathmaking of vulnerable people; support positive action consistent with SRV; and promote the work of the formulator of SRV, Prof. Wolf Wolfensberger.†
We welcome well-reasoned submissions grounded in SRV. Language used should be clear and descriptive. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is one easily available general style guide. We will not accept items simultaneously submitted elsewhere for publication or previously posted or distributed. All submissions are reviewed for suitability, relevance and clarity. Contact: journal@srvip.org
Examples of submission topics include but are not limited to: SRV as relevant to a variety of human services; descriptions and analyses of social devaluation and wounding; analyses of the impact(s) of societally valued roles; illustrations of particular SRV themes; analysis of the PASSING tool and specific ratings; research into and development of SRV theory and any of its themes; analysis of developments from an SRV perspective; success stories, as well as struggles and lessons learned, in trying to implement SRV; relevant opinion pieces; news analyses from an SRV perspective; book or movie reviews from an SRV perspective.
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Arrived: our copies of the 3 volume model coherency set!
We just received copies of the new Wolfensberger model coherency text from Valor Press.
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Publication of a model coherency text authored by Wolfensberger
I’m pleased to see that the 3 volume text written by Dr. Wolfensberger has been made available. https://presse.valorsolutions.ca/fr/model-coherency-the-key-to-human-service-quality-set-of-3
This work fleshes out the Social Role Valorization theme of model coherency, and provides detailed explanations of both model coherency design and model coherency assessment. This is an invaluable resource for SRV teachers and PASSING trainers, as well as for program directors and agency leadership who want to learn more about implementing the model coherency construct.
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‘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 on the island in common graves. Significant numbers of people who died from COVID were likely buried on the island. In the 1980s, people who died of AIDS were also likely buried on Hart Island.
At different times, Hart Island has served as a location for multiple devalued groups in various settings, including the following:
- a prison camp for Confederate soldiers during the US Civil War
- an isolation site during a yellow fever epidemic
- a charity hospital for women
- an insane asylum for women (with up to 300 women living in the asylum)
- a jail for prisoners whose job was to bury the dead
- a homeless shelter
- a tuberculosis hospital for women
- a reformatory for young men
- an overflow jail
- a disciplinary barracks for the US Navy
- a narcotics rehabilitation program
Oddly, during the Cold War, Hart Island was used as a missile site, from the 1950s until the 1970s.
For additional stories on Hart Island, see:
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1016122868/nyc-burial-mass-graves-unclaimed-harts-island-covid
http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/nycdoc/html/hart.html
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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 underlying concept of Easy Street, can be analyzed from a Social Role Valorization (SRV) perspective, in light of the overall goal of greater access to the ‘good things of life,’ the concept of societally valued roles, image enhancement and competency enhancement, SRV concepts such as the culturally valued analog and model coherency, etc. The PASSING tool and specific ratings could also be helpful in analyzing Easy Street.
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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 studying from a Social Role Valorization (SRV) perspective on many levels, including in relation to the responses from human service agencies as described in the article.
One quote has relevance to the theme of imagery in Social Role Valorization, in particular the elements of service setting location and activity:
“Some parents have taken to sending their children for treatment in Brooklyn, in part to avoid the glare of those who would recognize them at facilities on Staten Island.”Tweet
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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 education. Note also a possible link to PASSING, such as the rating:
- R2211 Competency-related intra-service recipient grouping–size
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/opinion/small-schools-work-in-new-york.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=1Tweet
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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 not friend. We know what friendship entails. Many people who are societally devalued, and who have been isolated and perhaps cut off from freely-given relationships, may indeed be lonely and hungry for relationship. This real need does not however justify distorting and conflating the role of server and the role of friend.
With this in mind, consider two recent articles in the 26 April 2020 New York Times. One article, entitled ‘Be a friend to the elderly and get paid,’ describes:
“Papa, a health tech company that provides ‘grandkids on demand’ … Founded in 2018, Papa pairs older adults with college students and young workers who have common interests and hobbies … the Papa pals … make between $11 and $14 an hour, not including tips and covered expenses like gas, on a freelance basis. (Papa is currently available in 20 states; the company typically charges clients $20 to $25 an hour.)”
Whatever needs for relationship and companionship that vulnerable elders may have, Papa pals are not friends with the elders with whom they are matched. It is rather, in the words of the article, a ‘friendship business.’ The language of client and the discussion of pay rates, makes this evident.
Compare this with another article in the same edition of the newspaper, this one entitled ‘Still lives: Visual diaries from 15 photographers give a glimpse of life in a time of isolation,’ a series of photographs and text.
One of the diary entries is by Michelle Agins. When the pandemic hit the US, Agins left New York City to stay with the mother of a neighbor. The mother, Florence Patterson, who is 84 years old, lives in rural upstate New York, near the Canadian border. Patterson is offering hospitality and sanctuary to Michelle Agins. Patterson is described in the article in role terms, as “a retired executive, former real estate broker, a humanitarian and an activist.” Patterson is providing help to Agins, and is also receiving help. This speaks to the mutual role of friend. As Agins notes, “I’m grateful to be here with Ms. Florence.” Florence Patterson is receiving some of the very same kinds of help as the elders described in the previous article about the health tech company, but the roles and relationships are fundamentally different.
TweetFranklin 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 society. She began thinking of ways the mass media shaped the unconscious biases of America’s children, she later wrote, and “felt that something could be done through our comic strips.” She wrote to several cartoonists, including Mr. Schulz, urging them to add black characters to their strips. At the time “Peanuts,” which had been appearing since 1950, was syndicated in about 1,000 newspapers and reached tens of millions of readers, according to Benjamin L. Clark, the curator at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif.”
“On July 31, 1968, Franklin Armstrong appeared in “Peanuts” for the first time, returning a beach ball Charlie Brown had lost in the ocean and then helping him build a sand castle. Nothing aside from the color of his skin set him apart from the other children in the strip.”
This is an interesting example to reflect on in light of Social Role Valorization (SRV). More specifically, Wolfensberger identifies four categories of action implications related to SRV (SRV monograph, 2004, pp. 78-80). These actions include efforts primarily to enhance social images on the larger societal level.
See this online article which includes the first cartoon including Franklin Armstrong.
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