The foundation for this program rests on our belief that individuals can find meaningful ways to participate in their community when provided with adequate and appropriate supports that are given in a respectful and caring manner.  The name, “Community-Sustained Programming” reflects our belief that the community is key in helping the individual find his or her place in it. Relationships must be developed and nurtured with community members, and this comes about when people use community resources on a daily basis and access those resources as consumers. We believe that meaningful programming occurs when individuals’ needs, wants, desires and preferences are consistently recognized and given opportunities to be actualized by optimizing choice and control over the process of pursuing self-identified and valued outcomes.

 

High trust environment

 

In our effort to provide superior quality, relationship-based services, we are dedicated to creating high trust environments that honor and support individuals as they seek to experience their own unique potentials, capabilities and desires in ways that enrich their world and the world around them.

 

A high trust setting has many characteristics that enhance the learning processes.  Self- produced or self-generated learniIn a high trust environment, each individual has the opportunity to set his or her own goals, make choices, discover options, create his or her own environment, and make visible all aspects of the total learning process.

 

In high trust environments, efforts are open and direct:  personal wants and group needs and agreements are all examined and made visible.  Efforts are planned by the individuals who are to undergo the experience.  The process is one of co-discovery. A high trust enables the creation of an environment that maximizes opportunities and choices for all individuals

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Community setting

 

When a trusting climate is created in the community, and the community is used as a medium for education, such education becomes a joint process of inquiry, goal setting, decision making and action planning.  The responsibility belongs to the learner.  The motivation to learn comes from sources inside the learner and from intrinsic rewards and consequences within the very process of interaction.  The curriculum comes from the learner.  Activities justify themselves by being enriching in the moment.  

The environment itself becomes the medium for learning, development, and relationship building.

 

In such a community setting, an optimal range of options is present.  The emotional climate is positive, supportive, and uses a minimum of constraints.  The potential for feedback is community wide, rather than feedback coming only from paid staff.  It is necessary for individuals to join each other in interdependence in seeking to solve any community problems that arise.

 

Such a setting sets up an atmosphere that encourages healthy risk, experimentation, choice, trust of self, freer expression of feelings and differences, openness and interdependence.

 

When we support rather than oppose people’s efforts to manage their experiences, we help give them a safe and controlled way to explore those experiences.

 

When we help create a safe space and honor the individual’s process, we are allowing that person to take responsibility for his or her own choices.

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Maintaining a desirable quality of life is the expressed goal of our program participants, some of whom find that quality in work or educational classes, others of whom find such quality in the exploration of hobbies, maintaining their independent living space, developing and working on friendships and exploring the complexities of personal relationships.

 

Spending their day in the least restrictive environment is an expressed factor in the pursuit of quality of life. Small groups and responsive staff are key components to program participants learning to develop trust that their individual needs will be met.  Choice, flexibility and regular, predictable access to desired sources of stimulation (people, places or things) contribute to a successful, quality day that is inherently rewarding.