One of my living nightmares is seeing how people lower on the social totem pole will be getting treated like crap and people on the higher levels of the social totem pole will have 99% zero-accountability.
And the reason why I am saying this is my day program (that I am still in a few hours on a single day x/week) has been changing. I’ve been told my the manager that the program basically has to changed to meet “the State’s” rules for these programs. The abstract is basically smaller groups = more one-on-one = allegedly more accountability to staff.
The problem is, the said ideas are basically theories. They are great ideas, but the problem is down in the most populated area of my state – it won’t work well. What you don’t see in advocacy rags like the New Hampshire Challenge is never the accountability to management, or someone that isn’t a DSP, a staff, caretaker, etc.
Management is the worst level of ethics, despite what a couple snooty, Upstate New Yorkers were preaching about in Nashua last summer. I’ve already discussed this and debunked their ideas as myths. I’ve remained skeptical of c-suite management at district offices for about a decade, when it came to my senses that my districts were running operations like a corrupt publicly traded company.
I also find it disturbing that a double standard of accountability, morals and ethics against individuals/rank and files is existent to this day. I don’t want to rat people out and because my name and likeness is associated with this site, so I’ll be as generic as possible. This narrative is about a manager of what’s basically outreach for families at the local area agency. I’ve known this individual for a number of years. A damn good professional where you have to literally be born to help autistics out – I stand by that statement. The individual was once married and w/ children. From what I know the individual is now divorced. This year, during “professional” gatherings (at least the way I see it) this individual was with another single person. And at least several gatherings, her professional attention to me has been shunned. But this individual and this man are what you would consider “lovebirds” in these casual settings, not just unprofessional, but so juvenile. Wether or not she’s on the clock or not is not relevant. I do not comment on speculative relationships (known to normal people as “crushes”) so I won’t go ether way…in case people draw conclusions. It really doesn’t matter, I find it very unprofessional that a managerial type would act so a teenage girl, in her social strata.
If this was an autistic that did the same damn thing, do you think there will be leeway? NEVER! Someone would in fact file a sexual harassment against my type. We have been trained by “professionals” trained by experts about zero tolerance for PDA, zero tolerance for any levels of affection and we were taught to hate – to be quite direct.
I respected this professional all the way, and my respect to this unnamed professional (to protect their innocence) has been severely degraded over this past year. I find it more disturbing if such harassment is standard to other human service agencies, school districts, etc, and the truth to such reality. I find the lecturing of code of ethics for DSPs just enabling more bad-girl behavior to the management level.
On a paraprofessional level, I’ve not had unethical run-ins, 9 times out of 10 it was in the higher hierarchy. I think I’m too wishful for better accountability to higher levels of power and by 2020, I bet there will be more bad girl behavior that will lead a generation of hopeless autistics in the 603 area code.