After learning about Asset Based Community Development, I apply ABCD to PEP, the greater Misericordia community, and my personal leadership style. 

ABCD at Misericordia

Misericordia is a home for people with disabilities. However, Misericordia perceives residents not according to their disability, but their ability. Misericordia’s mission statement maintains each staff member’s compassion and determination to uphold and improve resident’s rights and abilities. Specifically, Misericordia vows to maximize resident’s “dependence, self-determination, interpersonal relationships, and engagement in the community”. Their mission statement renders Misericordia’s strength based perspective, or Asset Based Community Development.

At Misericordia, the community contains all staff, residents, and their family and friends. Annual staffing meetings demonstrate ABCD in Misericordia, because all groups come together to discuss a resident’s progress. At annual staffings, resident’s attend meetings with their case manager, important family members, and supervising staff. The group reviews that individual’s development in the past year, and set goals for the forthcoming year. The individual expresses their likes and dislikes of Misericordia, and perhaps something they are interested in pursuing. These official meetings occur once per year, and serve as only one example of community members unifying to benefit residents. Social events year round offer spaces for collaboration and relationships between staff, residents, family and friends. Annual staffings, however, document the assets and contributions of all groups.

While these meetings look at achievements and praise the individual’s hard work, staff and family members also set goals for the next year by evaluating what has and has not worked in the past year. Evaluating past failures helps the staffing provide more effective care, and allows the family to accommodate their support as well. As stated in the mission statement, Misericordia acknowledges and works to provide care for the various level of abilities. Important here, is the distinction between ability and disability. Instead of viewing resident’s abilities as disabilities and deficits compared to more capable members in society, While dismissing and focusing on resident’s deficits is easy, seeing and planning for what they can do is a challenge Misericordia has accepted and made possible. That asset based planning incorporates weaknesses and makes them strengths in this community.

My department, Personal Effectiveness Program (PEP), focuses on those who struggle in Misericordia, for various reasons. Residents in PEP receive more individualized attention from staff, and a more structured environment. In this quieter, more focused environment, individuals are able to complete their work, and develop socially and cognitively. PEP’s role in providing a quieter, calmer environment for residents to flourish exemplifies asset based thinking within the Misericordia community.

Ally Drake, director of behavior services in PEP, focuses on co-workers’ strengths; likewise, I try to focus on others’ strengths. I write “try,” because holding people in a positive light all the time is a difficult, almost impossible task. Deadlines appear out of nowhere, people are tired, and random obstacles pop up, seemingly just to complicate things. Inevitably, people get distracted, overwhelmed, and frustrated with work, and take that frustration out on others. I see this happening in my classes everyday - college students staying up til the early morning to finish a paper they started 12 hours ago. These blunders also become apparent in group projects - dreaded assignments that occur in every class, yet never become easier. In order to finish these projects, though, members must undertake the challenge of grasping what people can do - otherwise a project is not even attempted.

In PEP, my patience is challenged in another sort of way. Residents know their schedules and are constantly reminded of where they are working that day, and when. However, telling a resident that work begins in 10 minutes and that they need to be in the classroom in 10 minutes no way ensures that they will be in the classroom at that time, or if everyone else will be in the classroom in 10 minutes. For myself, punctuality is essential to all aspects of life. Coming to PEP, where schedules are never to the dot, I had to learn to be flexible. I adjusted my expectations and definition of punctuality. In my mind, work began between 10-10:20, although we aimed for 10. Of course, being there on time is not enough. Variability in mood can be viewed as a deficit, especially when a resident resists activities for a day. If a resident was not in the mood for work, and required more time alone to prepare for work, then that route is better than an punctual, upset resident. In my first couple weeks at Misericordia, I had to readjust my views of assets to appreciate a new definition of punctuality and the importance of residents’ moods. Valuing assets and deficits requires flexibility and patience.

Utilizing this asset based thinking in PEP has led to numerous applications. Seeing the residents had difficulties staying on schedule, I created visual daily and weekly schedules for residents. In writing social stories (a tool that outlines positive, appropriate behavior for individual residents), I included multiple support systems for the resident, including their work location, co-workers, staff, and others. Social stories represent a small scale Asset Based Community Development plan. The social stories involve individuals - the residents themselves, staff, family - and the associations the individuals make up, like bingo night, chorus, photography club. The social stories describe friendly and social behavior in these interactions. Social stories include the location and situation, to specify the constructive behavior for residents.

For example, a social story on friendly communication delinates a conversation a resident can have while working. If a resident is preparing lunch with coworker, it is polite to greet the coworker, ask how they are doing, and if they need help. The resident can offer to retrieve an item from Misericordia’s kitchen. This interaction, outlined in a social story, includes individuals, associations (coworkers), institutions (the campus kitchen), land (the kitchen and the campus), and the economy (paid for working at PEP, must interact with people working in different departments). This social story is just one example of my position connecting resources across Misericordia for the betterment of the residents. John McKnight uses the term residents to describe the principal producers of an outcome. At Misericordia, his term applies perfectly. The residents are the reason Misericordia exists, and are the building blocks of Misericordia.