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Good Staff, Bad Staff, No Staff At All: Advice From Two Consumers
by Jim Beaty and Nathan Perry
Jim Beaty and Nathan Perry are two consumers of the services provided by direct support professionals in the community. When asked to describe the impact of direct service workforce development on their lives, they shared the following thoughts.
To us it is really simple – if agencies have good staff, we have good lives. If agencies have bad staff who aren’t trained, don’t understand our disabilities or have attitude problems, we suffer the effects.
We’ve been through the system, that’s for sure! Institutions, groups homes, special education, supported living, workshops, real jobs and semi-independent living. We’ve had more staff than we can count, some good and some bad. But, most of them have been really caring and nice.
To us good staff:
- Are supportive and try hard to understand our problems.
- Have creative ideas to help us resolve our anger and control our own behavior.
- Know about our disabilities and understand the things that are out of our control.
- Try to understand where we are coming from.
- Don’t hold grudges.
- Are there for us when we need them.
- Are loyal, honest, and respectful.
- Don’t see their job as “just a job” but as an opportunity to help people fit into society.
- Go out of their way for us.
- Are trustworthy.
To us bad staff:
- Don’t show up for work when they are supposed to.
- Yell at us and threaten us.
- Have bad attitudes.
- Don’t care about us.
- Are disrespectful.
- Steal our things from us.
- Sit around all day just waiting until it is time to leave.
- Hit us or put us in seclusion.
It really affects us when there are no staff to hire or when staff are hired and leave. When there are not enough staff to work with us it means that we sit around and are bored. For us this leads to doing things that get us into trouble like gambling with lottery tickets, fighting or spending all of our money on stuff so we don’t have money to pay our bills. It makes us feel like we are put on the back burner and neglected because there is no one there to help us with our shopping, banking, bills, solving problems or doing stuff in the community.
When staff that we really like are hired and then leave it makes us feel lost and mad. It seems like we lose a friend and companion. There are a lot of past staff that we really liked, but haven’t seen in years and really miss. It seems like we just get to know them and then they give up on us and quit. Then we have to start all over. Sometimes it makes us feel violated because they say they really care and are interested in our lives, but then they leave.
We don’t like it when staff get hired that we don’t know or haven’t met. Most of the time we get to interview new staff and get to know them before they are hired. But, sometimes they just show up. When that happens it stresses us out.
Also, it is important for staff to be trained and to understand us as people and our specific disabilities. If staff don’t understand Tourettes or autism, there is no way they can understand us and provide the supports we need to live successfully in the community.
We think it is really important that agencies and the government do whatever they can to help people with disabilities find staff who understand us, want to work for us, and are willing to stick by us. We also think our staff need to get paid more money and also be respected by people in society.
Jim Beaty is a consumer and self-advocate who lives in Indiana, and Nathan Perry is a consumer and self-advocate who lives in Minnesota.
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Resources: Web Sites Related to Direct Support Workforce Development
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Citation: Gaylord, V., Hewitt, A., & Larson, S. (1998). Impact: Feature Issue on Direct Support Workforce Development, 10(4) [online]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Institute on Community Integration. Available from http://ici.umn.edu/products/impact/104/. __________ Hard copies of Impact are available from the Publications Office of the Institute on Community Integration. The first copy of this issue is free; additional copies are $4 each. You can request copies by phone at 612-624-4512 or E-mail at icipub@umn.edu, or you can fax or mail us an order form. See our listing of other issues of Impact for more information. The print design version (PDF, 448K, 28 pp.) of this issue of Impact is also available for free, complete with the color layout and photographs. This version looks the most like the newsletter as it was printed. The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity employer and educator.
