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CONTEXT BASED AUTISM INFORMATION: Safer Providerships
Threshold is often asked by service providers and our provider agencies, "WHAT can we DO to provider better services to the Autism community when we do not have enough resources?" I most often answer that, "It is more a matter of WHO we may BE as providers, within our powerful Autism providerships, that will make a real difference for people with Autism and our family members." I have witnessed over and over again, that this critical shift of consciousness within this common question is the most reliable path to creating safer and sounder providerships. Then our provider organization can lift up, and sustain all of those of us who must live, work and cope with the mutual impacts of Autism Spectrum conditions across our homes, schools, workplaces, and communities.
The difference between these doing and being terms is not a small linguistic matter. Focusing on DOING something FOR or TO a person or group is hugely different than reflecting on BEING someone IN RELATION TO the same person or group. The former requires that we deal with how we are narrowly constrained by budgets and positive and appropriate (and negative and inappropriate) regulatory forces. The later opens us up to how we can help make our selves and each other free to bring our total external and optimum interal resources to bear on the problems and potentials of people with Autism and our community memberships.
In reality, it would be best to balance a dual approach to our doing around, and being in realtion to, Autism. This would promote both a strong focus on HOW we are doing what we do in providing best Autism intervention practices, in direct connection to WHY it is important to promote a deep and collective reflective process for continually looking at WHO we will BE as we provide Autism services and intervention programs. This dual approach can effectively conserve and ethically prioritize what will always be some form of limited budget resources, while liberating our fullest human potentials.
Over the years best practice research supports and we have observed that these are critical safer providership principles:
•Integrate practicum Autism professional education opportunities into the broadest service provider communities possible within all higher educational institutions. Provide ongoing continuing education and methodology lab training in Autism intervention communities across the life span of educational settings as our world's "first responders." The goal of these educational efforts should go beyond information sharing and knowledge transmission. They should be both grounded in diversity awareness and focused on providers' practical skills development in the field. This is a brave and humble path.
•Put infant screening and early-as-possible life span diagnostic systems in place that assure that professionals will timely notice whether a child needs to be screened for Autism Spectrum conditions and accurately name when we do ASAP.
•Commit to affirming by saying YES to all human beings needs, then choose to priortize how we can individually and collectively put in the time and effort to meet them using all available resources.
•Establish total transparency about the interests of agencies as they may or may not align with the interests of families as we define our own individual and our group's collective interests.
•Engage the Autism community and its present centers of leadership on an ongoing basis to seek the broadest possible advice, and where appropriate, to negotiate consensus on how information about our community will be constructed, presented,, and distributed.
•Maintain absolute confidentiality to protect families' rights to full privacy, without unnecessarily creating barriers to families connecting with our Autism community members and our communities at large.
•Foster a deep warm empathy for all people who must live, work and cope with the mutual impacts of Autism, while holding very firm boundary as providers with the obligation to serve the members of diverse communities to the best of our knowledge, awareness, skills, and abilities.
•Advocate for service and program designs that facilitate equitably high structures of mutual support and demand, relative to our individual capacities, between those of us who must live with Autism, and those of us who must work in service to the Autism community. This structure has been shown to foster optiumum developmental outcomes for us all.
Find ways to strengthen the whole fabric of Autism community as a survivorship network, by avoiding personalizing collegial conflicts, or marginalizing unpopular voices, as they exist within and outside our groups. Rise above the fray to hold a vision that is authentically and broadly inclusive. There is always room at the table, if we just add another place as folks arrive.
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