A Profile of a Futures Planning Group
Compiled by Betty Atherton and Julie Shaw Cole.
Edited by Julie Shaw Cole.
Betty was up against the wall of her son’s disabilities. Organizations and agencies in her community hadn’t responded to her repeated pleas for support. She had knocked on every door and was about to give up when she found Jo Ann Boyle. Jo Ann had new ideas — and new ways to realize them.
At first Betty was baffled by Jo Ann’s technique of “blank-paper planning.” But soon a fresh view of son Raymond’s potential brought her new hopes and dreams. She began to see that things could happen for him that she had never let herself even consider. Betty and her family brought high energy, unconditional love, and warm hospitality to the “futures planning” group that grew up around the new plans and ideas for Raymond. The group set out to listen carefully to what Raymond wanted and found ways to see those “wants” fulfilled.
Some of Raymond’s group members were pioneers in the new concepts of futures planning and supported living in Kentucky. With determination and a delicate sense of timing, they worked together with Betty and her family to make Raymond’s dreams real.
States are now implementing through consumer-directed programs for people with disabilities what Raymond’s group realized for him. It took patience, creativity, dogged stubbornness, an ability to dance with bureaucracies, and a taste for fried fish. Raymond’s story can show others how this CAN be done today.
236 pp. Paperback.
$20.00
ISBN-13: 978-09721189-2-7 | Copyright 2008
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Simulation exercises — activities in which participants get into wheelchairs, tie on blindfolds or stuff earplugs into their ears to “simulate” having a disability — have become a popular “Awareness Day” event. But they’ve also come under fire from disability activists and educators, who criticize them as demeaning and inaccurate.
Nonfiction