TURNING A CORNER

 

 I work with individuals with intellectual disabilities, (mentally retarded) at a State facility.  For seventeens years I have been in a direct care position assisting them with daily care needs: bathing, changes, dressing, ambulation or transfers from one seated surface to their wheelchair.  Tying shoes, buttoning shirts, putting on a clothing protector for meal time, preparing the meals, various textures of food and thicken drinks, doing dishes, laundry, going on excursions.  My duties and tasks have run the gambit.  As a direct care staff I was the backbone workhorse of the State School/ Living Center.  I love working with the "Individuals" (Residents, Clients, "persons served"); finding them just various fascinating aspects of the rest of the normal population.

   Seems my summer job became a career.  I'm making a lateral move into another department, Rehabilitation Tech II.  Though I will still be working in the very same facility, and on the same building (22A) the "job" will be vastly different for the first time in 17 years.  Life Skills is a "Workshop" area that strives on the most basic of levels to 'teach' through the diligence of repetition mundane activities upon which to build complex tasks.  I will be a Supervisor guiding the Direct Care Staff to carry out their daily programming tasks.  To be sure; the abilities of our profoundly impaired individuals is quiet limited.  The daunting task is "the diligence of repetition" when observable results are not seen.
   Staffing issues alone are a major hurdle to manage and re-direct but encouraging, assisting by example and being a leader is a challenge I've set before myself.  I went 17 years as a Direct Care staff, I know the secret excuse and tricks of evasion and I've worked and been and OJT trainer for nine years.  Being a Supervisors will certainly bring its on challenges, but I certainly wont forget where I came from either. The most important take away lesson I've learned in seventeen years: THE RESIDENT is always right, it's their HOME  and we... we are their Servants!!!  It is a very stressful place to work.  I hope my small contribution will "Make A Difference In People's Lives"

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‘Happy, homelike atmosphere’
A visit to the Denton State School, the largest in Texas, reveals a sprawling campus spread across well-kept lawns. Superintendent Randy Spence described the place as a “happy, homelike atmosphere.”

“The vast majority of our employees love the people they work with,” said Cecilia Fedorov, another spokeswoman for the Department of Aging and Disability Services. “They think of them as extended family.”