Late 2019

I started to see a change in my day program that I didn’t like seeing. This program is for adults 21 to basically death. This program does not take in anyone from birth to 3. Obviously the local Special Education depts take care of the developmentally delayed population. But the regulations that laid the eggs dating to the creation of The Hopeless Autistic started to roost by the turn of the decade. Because 2020 was the year of implementing “regulations” and compliance. The last day program I attended was probably the last one that had to implement the so-called “changes”.

The changes are really tragic. EVERYONE has to be out in the community now going forward no matter what program or Waiver funding you get.

This means bringing your own lunch to an sit-in restaurant.

This means being at a library (in some cases it’s an out of town) and some just aren’t smart enough to take a book and destroy them (this goes back to the years that followed Laconia.)

This means people will go to box-stores and pace around to get their check-on-the-box for physical activity.

And. The. Mall. Oh gawd, I feel for everyone, the people who have to witness it and worse the people that have to be there without purpose.

The biggest change I saw, was a wall being built figuratively from the management and the rank and file DSPs and clients themselves. From my experiences the management hung with management (you know so they can have more power over our autonomy) while I felt lonely around a group of people.

Part of this was the change of regulations to put Code of Ethics for DSPs, the fucking National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals is just a bunch of New York hippies who believe in complete Swiss/No-Bias attitude and implies a lot of the teacher/student boundaries that is FFS Alive…we are FUCKING adults! Can I ask a DSP out and bang her and maybe report the management about our “relationship”. Wait you’re going to throw us under the bus because it’s like like fucking a teacher”?

I’ve noticed that some of my Facebook-friends used to be friends with some staff, but never management. That’s understandable. Some of the snooty-ass DSPs who wanted a separate lives, would only be friends with their peers (the other DSPs.) I understand some of the reasonings, but you do come off you’re there to gossip to other DSPs about other client’s experiences (kid me not, it really happens.) I feel like some intimate relations with the staff on a reasonable level requires the staff to have some empathy instead of being cold and manipulative.

I do not think the Code of Ethics will make better DSPs, it will make them more cold-hearted and less distant to people that need the most to be interconnected to society where they are abandoned.

In over 2 years with the COVID drama, I am so enraged of how devaluing adults with special needs in a really toxic state could even allow this, worse our media outlets do not have the time or have their corporate interests to serve the communities of license, but ranting on the media is not going to be a common theme.