ARTbrain Cedar Summer – learning about Truth and Reconciliation

I think that Truth and Reconciliation is the most important conversation of our times, and full of so many interesting aspects for all of us.  Yet people with disabilities are almost always left out of the conversation.  There are so many parallels to our stories that we think it is important to foster discussion about it.  As Indigenous people were moved into Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals, people with disabilities were hospitalised.  I talked to retired social workers from Woodlands who took Indigenous children out of Indian Hospitals and into Woodlands to keep them “safer.”  The Woodlands Memorial garden contains … Continue reading ARTbrain Cedar Summer – learning about Truth and Reconciliation

Planning for Vulnerabilities with Self Advocates

Why is there a photograph of Woodlands Institution in a posting about planning for vulnerabilities with self advocates?  Because, once upon a time, our society thought that the best way to keep people safe was to look them away.  Ken Scott, in his historical research article, The BC Public Hospital for the Insane, 1872-1902, writes of the earliest institution being built in 1878 and in 1894, only 16 years later, with a total of 117 patients there was already a royal commission into abuses: . . . to investigate questionable practices . . . when a male patient died after … Continue reading Planning for Vulnerabilities with Self Advocates

Shift-It Resources

Someone recently wrote, kind of disparagingly, that there are hundreds maybe thousands of kinds of person centred planning tools.  Well, not really.  I’ve found about 80 and while there continue to be new ones created all the time, they often replicate other resources, for reasons of corporate or personal branding rather than because someone has a new, better idea.   These are also often uninformed by theory and contemporary practices.  If you really don’t have a better idea, don’t bother, really.  If you do, please create and share it! Of these processes, the most elegant and beneficial that I’ve found are … Continue reading Shift-It Resources