Ten
Stories
of Love
and
Hope:
Gentle
Teaching
in the
HOMES
Community
(Excepts
pages
1-6)
By John
McGee
|
 |
Ten Stories of Love and Hope:
Gentle Teaching in the
HOMES Community
(Excepts pages 1-6)
By John McGee
Table of Contents
PREFACE
SECTION ONE: AN
INTRODUCTION TO HOMES AND GENTLE
TEACHING
SECTION TWO: TEN
STORIES OF LOVE AND HOPE
HEATHER: Crawling Out Of A Black Hole
CHAD T: A
Motherless Child
BRIAN: “I Am The
Hardest Core Person Ever”
MOSHE: From Night
Crawler To Nocturnal Samaritan
SHANNON: “When I Am Down, I Cut Myself”
CHAD B: The
Prodigal Son
ISH AND
WILLY: Living With Hope
MILAN: The Waterboy
TASHA: “I Gave My Anger Away”
SECTION THREE: GENTLE TEACHING
PHILOSOPHY AND CONCEPTS
SECTION FOUR:
PRACTICAL TOOLS FOR CAREGIVERS
SECTION FIVE : PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
FOR IMPLEMENTING THE HOMES MODEL
CONCLUSION
This film and guide are
about the Healthy Opportunities for
Meaningful Experience Society (HOMES) in
Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada.
Over ten years ago, the HOMES Society
decided to work with the most
marginalized youth and adults in BC,
using the model and principles of Gentle
Teaching. The goal was to administer a
“culture of gentleness” based on
unconditional love.
In May 2006, ten
individuals from HOMES agreed to be
interviewed about how their lives have
changed after being part of the HOMES
community. The result of those
interviews is a film of their
experiences, I’ve
Been Down That Road. This
booklet is a guide to accompany the
film, as well as specific information on
how HOMES uses Gentle Teaching with the
people in their care.
This film and guide are
intended for caregivers, educators, and
administrators who deal with
marginalized people everywhere. The
first section of this guide offers an
introduction to Gentle Teaching and a
description of people in the HOMES
community. Section Two of the guide
contains more background information
about the lives of the ten people in the
film, including the Gentle Teaching
approach to dealing with different
disorders such as schizophrenia,
depression, and borderline personality
disorder. Section Three gives more
in-depth information about the
philosophy and concepts of Gentle
Teaching. Section Four offers practical
tools for caregivers, and Section Five
addresses practical considerations for
implementing the HOMES model in
communities around the world.
This film and guide are
about ten young people who have survived
tragic life circumstances. The “system”
had long ago given up on them, and their
last hope was to enter the HOMES
community, a service supporting over 50
individuals with special needs in a
range of small group homes and family
homes in Abbotsford, British Columbia,
Canada.
HOMES was formed over ten
years ago to respond to the needs of a
small group of individuals who had not
succeeded in many previous attempts to
leave institutional life. It grew out of
a coalition of leaders from existing
agencies, family members, and staff from
former institutions. From the start,
government worked closely with HOMES in
its developmental stages. Almost all
necessary support services were
consolidated within HOMES to enable
flexibility and quick responses to
personal needs.
Who Does Homes Serve?
HOMES serves the most
marginalized—those who have been through
jails, prisons, forensic hospitals,
psychiatric hospitals and clinics,
foster homes, group homes, and raw
homelessness.
These men and women come
from the other side of life—lives made
up of broken homes, sexual molestation,
rape, litanies of loss and death,
addiction to booze, cocaine, heroin,
prostitution, homelessness, hunger,
self-mutilation, and attempts at
suicide. Nothing had changed them. The
closest that they came to living in the
community was living on the streets,
begging for food, and searching for
cigarette butts.
They had been diagnosed
with labels such as borderline
personality, attachment disorder,
schizophrenia, depression, fetal alcohol
syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, and
intellectual disabilities. They had been
drugged and subjected to behavioural
management.
(Put this somewhere
else?) All around the world individuals
with these needs challenge society to
find forgiving and loving ways to help
them. Yet the help has focused on
behavioural interventions, government
data on outcomes, and stringent group
homes and traditional institutional
settings.
Gentle Teaching
The HOMES Society has
embraced the Gentle Teaching method
since inception and has asked its
caregivers to take a different approach
to dealing with people. The HOMES
community has put aside traditional
practices such as physical management,
restraint, and consequences. It does not
accept interventions based on the use of
reward and punishment, designed to
modify personally and socially
destructive behaviours.
The first duty of Gentle
Teaching is to assure each person
protection from any harm, mainly through
a sharp eye on prevention, constant
nurturing, and loving caregiver
interactions. This method most often
prevents violence by giving individuals
what they want, so caregivers have the
chance to enter their space and give
them what they need. Individuals
learn to feel safe and loved, to see
their caregivers as authentic
companions, and to slowly learn to trust
others in the broader community.
Although traditional
approaches and practices based on
control and compliance might work for a
time as a last resort, HOMES asks its
caregivers to see themselves as
companions to marginalized persons.
“What works” is not necessarily what is
best for the person and his/her
caregivers. For example, in the past,
scientists have said that cold baths,
lobotomies, the denial of food and
drink, and cattle prods work with
marginalized persons.
HOMES focuses on two
central purposes: first, giving each
person a sense of feeling safe and loved
with their caregivers as companions, and
second, helping individuals to express
love to others, both in the HOMES
community and in the greater community. HOMES
emphasizes educating and mentoring its
caregivers and celebrating and sharing
each person’s skills and gifts.
As part of a culture of
gentleness, HOMES has developed a
flexible, person-centred approach and
a-quick-to-respond management model that
recognizes the depth of each person’s
past experiences and the wounds and
scars that these have left on the hearts
and souls of those whom it serves.
In its approach to Gentle
Teaching, HOMES defines care-giving as:
-
the
development of new
memories
-
feeling
safe within oneself and
with others
-
feeling
loved, respected, and
even noble
-
feeling
accepted as a person
-
being an
active participant in
one’s own life project
-
feeling
the power and strength
to help others and live
in community
This is a dynamic and
personalized process, which happens in
the heart, not the mind. It does not
involve “teaching the person a lesson,”
but helping them define deep in their
hearts what life is all about, so that a
sense of genuine companionship and
community becomes as natural as
breathing air.
HOMES expects that its
caregivers’ central task is to give
repeated acts of unconditional love.
These slowly lead to the development of
new memories and feelings of
companionship and community. It
involves, eventually, a sense of
engagement—doing things together, doing
things for others, and the rare ability
to give unconditionally to others.
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