Next Instalment of my review of Wolf Wolfensburger's "How to Comport Ourselves in an Era of Shrinking Resources" in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 148-162

Here I will review the final three recommendations from Wolf for developing "broad strategy proposals that aim at a favorable cost/yield ratio" (p. 153). I reviewed the previous nine recommendations in previous blogs.

Wolf's tenth recommendation is to take the competency development of impaired people much more seriously, remarking that currently, "there are enormous variations in competency emphases in different services and settings, including in family life" (p. 158). His point is that development of greater personal, social and economic competencies lessens dependence and reduces the need for paid services, and so should be cultivated from the earliest age. While many people would see this as stating the blindingly obvious, Wolf points out that social and economic competencies have been neglected, at least in part due to a growing emphasis on self-determination (without linking this to competencies) and on "inclusion" (his quotation marks) without corresponding ties to competency acquisition. With his tongue firmly in cheek, Wolf points out that "social competencies include such things as courtesy, obedience, cooperativeness, and social graces, and economic competencies include the ability and willingness to work and to submit to the instructions of superiors..." (p. 158). I am reminded of a Family Guy episode where Peter (the father) is tested and found to be intellectually and developmentally impaired, progresses to wearing a helmet and begins to act as though entitled to all manner of narcisisstic treatment and special dispensation, citing as excuses for a whole litany of selfish, boorish and abominable behaviour, "Special Needs!!!!". Wolf's explanation for how it got to be this way - "people having gotten insanicerated." (p. 158).

This leads Wolf to discussion of services having hired ever more and more incompetent staff: "In fact, they have been scraping the bottom of the employability barrel, hiring the people who are the last step away from unemployability and who sometimes do not even speak the language of those served....[although allowing that]...these people sometimes are good caretakers, especially where body care is needed, but are very poorly equipped to be role models, teachers, trainers, and developmentalists and to foster positive appearance, normal behaviors, good manners, and clear and civil speech..." He goes on, and explains that in his opinion, such hiring reflects the philosophy of service employers that competency development is unimportant, or perhaps that service recipients may not have any growth potential in those areas, and there lacks incentive for services to cultivate these competencies.

Wolf takes a moment to point out the difficulties that become inherent when considering that children have vastly more unactualized potential for the development of competencies than adults do, and therefore, despite the advantage of having more family support, might be expected to command more of the service dollar. The dilemma for Wolf is that many adults are abandoned or in the care of parents who might be progressively losing their capacity to care for them. In my experience, there have been two "generations" at least of adults raised in the care of families - one whose competencies have NOT been developed (but whose care may have been excellent) but there is huge potential, at any age, to develop it. There is also one of people whose parents kept them in the community and have raised them to be as independent as possible, accessing plenty of academic and lifeskill supports and development opportunities, though still requiring advocacy and protective care as well as some relatively minimal supports for basic living responsibilities such as banking, cooking and negotiating social and economic systems. The first group, if abandoned through death or incapacities of their parents or siblings or other such caregivers, absolutely require significant amounts of support, and may take a long time developing, if at all, competencies for independent living, though they have the potential for it. The second group, if abandoned through death or incapacities in the same manner as the other group, may find themselves regressed by the system, as it often cannot address the unique combinations of independence - kind of like the "splinter skills" referred to when describing people with severe specific learning disabilities (such as autism spectrum disorders) require innovative and uniquely flexible accommodations. They will often be "under-accommodated", leading in a number of cases to crisis and expensive interventions to rescue them, or "over-accommodated" at significant expense more than necessary to meet their needs, which often continues and becomes an entrenched phenomenon of the service system. I have lots of experience in this phenomenon, and have observed this tendency over the years, especially in the Ontario scene, following waves of de-institutionalization. I wish Wolf had talked a bit more about this in his 10th point, but I suspect that discussion will be for another day. Knowing what I do about Wolf, this hasn't flown in under his radar!

Wolf's eleventh point relates to public attitudes. I am reminded here of Wolf's workshops, and those of his proteges and colleagues, on the process of "Distantiation", of the march to maltreatment, beginning with the noticing and societal valuation of differences. At some point, I will blog separately on this process as I was helped to understand it by Darcy Miller and Wolf himself in a number of workshops and presentations I attended over the years. Wolf encourages us to ensure that "Unrelenting attention" be paid to public attitudes. If these attitudes turn bad, says Wolf: "this will override all safeguards, including laws, and endanger service funding even more. Here he also points out that this goes far beyond "language policing" (p. 158), noting there is almost no evidence that "the so-called 'people first' rules change anybody's mind content, while a great deal is known as to which attitude change strategies are effective, or even highly effective..." Here he cites a few examples of how this can be done, (but read the PASSING Manual (Wolfensburger and Thomas) for a detailed exposition of this).

Wolf's twelfth point relates to his concept of "deathmaking", and warning that people are even now being "successfully brainwashed" to see this as the answer to many problems. He sums it up nicely in this: "If the very lives of impaired and dependent people are not sacred, and not deemed worth living, how can we expect people to pay out vast sums in support of such persons once they are born and grow up?"  Naturally, Wolf goes on in some detail about his opinions on abortion, infanticide, suicide, suicide assistance, and involuntary euthanasia, particularly as it is more and more possible, with every new discovery from the medical community, to diagnose conditions in the womb, including risk for developing disease and disability at older ages (such as Alzheimer's).

Wolf cites himself, in his 2003 monograph The Future of Children with Severe Impairments: What Parents Fear and Want, and What They and Others May Be Able to Do About It (pp. 43-53) to further explore "several of these 12 points" in greater detail.

Wolf closes his exposition of 12 broad strategy proposals aiming at a favorable cost/yield ratio by allowing that there would be additional ways of saving money in human services, and many more again ways to re-distribute and save money outside of human services, which lie outside his scope at the present time. He also remarks about picking battles wisely.

Having discussed these proposed strategies, Wolf enunciates several principles that support the strategies. Some of these are quite familiar to those of us who have followed Wolfensburger's teachings for some time:
1. Solidarity, collaboration, and interconnectedness versus radical individualism - the "we" versus "me" argument. He encourages us to eschew wanting to profit from the hardship of others, and to be willing to carry an equitable burden so that hardship does not fall disproportionately on those who are undeserving of the burden or make convenient targets for shouldering disproportionate burden through weakness or marginalization; 2. Justice - particularly equitability; 3. The principle of subsidiarity, which he explains is that problems need to be "solved at the lowest possible level of social organization" (p. 159) - Wolfensburger opines that "Many of the current societal and human service dysfunctionalities are fruits of this violation of a sound principle..."; 4. Realism - the idea that the strategies are plausible and achievable, which will be necessary for them to "gain ground" - While "Petitions, demonstrations and so forth may save a particular service, ...[they]... do not contribute to cost containment"

In my next blog, I will finish the review of Wolf's article (which next goes into a particular "for instance", talking about the issue of tackling unemployment of handicapped people and Wolf's suggestion of developing more unpaid but valued work.