How SIS helped Sue use the post office independently

Jonathon Crumley, Regional Supervisor for Middle Georgia Behavioral Services, shares a real life example of how simple, yet profound an effect determining the right support can make to the life of a person living with an intellectual disability. Sue is a high functioning individual with intellectual disability and works for an Easter Seals office in Georgia. Sue’s real name has been withheld for confidentiality purposes. Crumley presented Sue’s story at a special theme session titled “Implementing SIS Within Three States” at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), publisher of the Supports Intensity Scale.

“First and foremost, the Support Intensity Scale does something very amazingly foundational for us. It changes our mindset about how we approach people with developmental disabilities. It takes us from a mindset that focuses on what a person can and cannot do, to a mindset of what supports does this person need in order to do this activity independently. And when you get down into support coordination and use those results in the development of an Individualized Service Plan (ISP), a lot of great things begin to happen. Today, I get to share with you a success story, and we like success stories, right?

The story that I want to share with you today is particularly significant to me because I administered the Supports Intensity Scale for this young lady, and also wrote the ISP for her. Her name is Sue. Sue is a high functioning individual, but the SIS assessment revealed that she had a couple of areas where she needed support, primarily in home living activities and using public services in the community. So when I administered the SIS and scored it out, it gave me something to go back to talk to Sue about. That's exactly what we did in the pre-ISP meeting where we concentrate on personal focus and what is most meaningful to the individual. We brought in those areas and Sue gave us very personal information on what she wanted the next year to look like.

We determined that when it came to using public services in the community, Sue was not very interested in learning to use the bank, she was not very interested in using the library, but the post office was a completely different story because it meant a lot for Sue to be able to write letters to her family members. That carried a tremendous amount of weight for Sue…that she didn't know how to use the post office. So as she was that day, when it came time to write a letter, someone was doing that for her.

So in developing her ISP, we were able to shape the action plan in such a way that we started off with a tour of the post office. She got the grand tour by the postmaster, how it works, what happens to the letters when they go in, where to put them, and how they get processed. Her action plan further developed into how to use the post office, how to fill out her envelope, where to put the stamp, how to communicate and relate to the individual at the counter, where to put her envelope in the post office, and how the whole postal system worked.

So what had happened up until that point is that her goals had revolved primarily around things that were important for Sue to do, but her goals in past in past were not very important to her. So when we focused on the results of the Supports Intensity Scale, we were able to very specifically write an action plan that was not so much geared toward what was important for her, but what was important to her. We did away with goals that Sue would clean her toilet with no more than three verbal prompts, you know. Who could get excited about cleaning their toilet with no more than three verbal prompts, right? We put it in the ISP, but we didn't make it the heart and soul of the action plan. Instead we replaced it, we replaced results from SIS, results from the home living activities in terms of her cooking, knowing how to cook, knowing how to prepare meat, and using the post office.

And today, although the provider couldn't be here to share firsthand, I got a report before I came that today, Sue is using the post office independently, on her own, with no support. She knows how that whole system works. Her cooking skills have gone up tremendously. She is engaging life today on a completely different level than she was a year ago. It was all because we knew how to channel our supports, we knew how to channel our efforts because of the results that we got from SIS. It has paid off for her in a tremendous way. What a great story. What a great motivation.”

If you have questions for Jonathon Crumley on how the SIS is being used to create Individualized Service Plans, please send an email to jcrumley@georgiasupport.com

The transcript of this session has been altered slightly to reflect better clarity in the written word.