PALO ALTO — When she was done helping Elizabeth Danner pack her lunch, Loren Resuello turned to the three other adults in her group and led them out the door for a new kind of outing for people with profound intellectual and physical disabilities.
“We’re going to Stevenson House,” said Brian Haedrich, a tall, 29-year-old man from Sunnyvale who comes most weekdays to Abilities United, a local therapy center. He said it again and again and quite excitedly. But the ever cheerful and patient Resuello kept asking Haedrich to explain why the group was going to the senior home only two blocks away. She wanted to engage him in conversation.
“To shred paper,” Haedrich finally answered.
Until the past few years, taking people with developmental disabilities out for walks or to the mall offered limited therapy — mostly fresh air, exercise and a break from routine. Resuello’s group walked to the senior home as volunteers to do real work — shredding confidential documents. Their trip represented a new approach to treatment that calls for including people with developmental disabilities in ordinary life and work.
“There’s no therapy in walking around the shopping mall or in eating ice cream all day,” said Roger Young, manager of Abilities United. “Everything has to have a purpose.”
It wasn’t that long ago, only about 40 years, that the developmentally disabled were locked away at home or in human warehouses. The so-called People First movement sprung up in the 1970s to de-institutionalize them, but they remained largely apart. It has been only in the past decade or so that treatment providers and the federal government have shifted to a goal of fully integrating the developmentally disabled in community life and work.
Young explained the new purpose of the walks this way: Where they go and what they do there must offer them a sense of personal value, something constructive and socially redeeming to do every day, and help them develop independent-living skills and personal relationships.
To see this new approach in action, East Side/West Side took a walk recently with a small group led by Resuello, a “community training instructor” and Boston University graduate in psychology and sociology. In addition to the talkative Haedrich, our group included Danner, a 47-year-old woman from Mountain View who wears a helmet for protection against seizures. There also was 35-year-old Zachary Beckwith of Palo Alto, and Christina Marie Knestrick, 40, of Menlo Park.
The group sat in a semicircle around the paper shredder at Stevenson House. Haedrich jumped right in. His mother, Teresa Knights Haedrich, said her son now looks forward to the outings and the assignment.
“In Brian’s mind, the paper shredding is a job,” she told me later by telephone. “That is a great thing because he takes it seriously and it gives him a sense of responsibility.” Resuello had to coax Danner and Knestrick to chip in.
Shredding paper, Resuello said, “improves their motor skills and attention spans.”
It helps Danner strengthen her grip for everyday tasks like pulling the lids off plastic snack containers for herself at home. The repetitive task helps Beckwith sharpen his focus. Resuello files daily progress reports.
As for getting across the message that they are doing something socially valuable, she said, Abilities United doesn’t have to drum it into them with lectures. This is also the case at Hope Services in San Jose, a larger center that recently drove a group to help clean up a local beach.
“Even the surfer dudes came up and introduced themselves,” said Cathy Bouchard, director of community services for the nonprofit. “Our clients totally sensed that they were doing something important. They know the difference no matter how much they are impaired by their disability.”
Fresh out of Boston University, Resuello was job-hunting in the Bay Area when she heard about an opening for “community training instructor” at the center. The job paid only $13 an hour to start, but it offered her a foot in the door. She hopes to become a nurse with a specialty in psychology for people with behavioral and developmental problems.
After an hour of shredding, the group headed for Piazza’s Fine Foods two blocks away, where they bought cookies and chips to go along with their packed lunches. Each of them has learned where the items are shelved.
The next stop was an outdoor patio at the Cubberley Community Center, where Resuello broke out a deck of Uno playing cards. Again, it looked like another activity to just keep them busy.
“What people don’t understand about games is that they help them reach their goals,” Resuello said. In this activity, the goal was to recognize colors and numbers and teach them how to socialize in a group.
Back at Abilities United, manager Young explained that the center’s waiting list has ballooned since the center started revamping the old outings. Participants also go out for music and painting lessons, work in the center’s garden and occasionally visit fine-art museums. Young and his counselors are always looking for new, practical things for their participants to do.
“It takes little steps,” Resuello said, “to make big differences.”
