Valor et Solutions | Presse Valor press

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Volume 1 – An Explanation of Service Models, and Service Model Coherency

Volume 2 – Designing a Human Service to Be Model Coherent in Accord with SRV

Volume 3 – Evaluation a Human Service by Means of the Model Coherency Rating Tool

Wolf Wolfensberger, PhD (1934-2011) was a long-time professor at the Syracuse University School of Education, where he was on the faculty as a full professor since 1973, and directed an independent training body, the Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership, and Change Agentry. He had been teaching and writing on the topic of this book for several decades but held off attempting to get it published until he was satisfied of its completeness and quality. At his death in early 2011, he had by and large completed the manuscript, but it needed major editing. With the cooperation of the Trust Under Will of Nancy Artz Wolfensberger, we have undertaken the editing, and this book is the result.

Human service is a complicated endeavor, in which a number of component parts must fit together and work in harmony in order to benefit the recipients. The subject of this book, model coherency, is about putting the component parts of a service together properly--coherently. As Wolfensberger puts it, in a nutshell, model coherency answers the question: “Are the right people being served by the right people, in the right setting, using the right tools and methods?”

Wolf Wolfensberger, PhD (1934-2011) was a long-time professor at the Syracuse University School of Education, where he was on the faculty as a full professor since 1973, and directed an independent training body, the Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership, and Change Agentry. He had been teaching and writing on the topic of this book for several decades but held off attempting to get it published until he was satisfied of its completeness and quality. At his death in early 2011, he had by and large completed the manuscript, but it needed major editing. With the cooperation of the Trust Under Will of Nancy Artz Wolfensberger, we have undertaken the editing, and this book is the result.

Human service is a complicated endeavor, in which a number of component parts must fit together and work in harmony in order to benefit the recipients. The subject of this book, model coherency, is about putting the component parts of a service together properly--coherently. As Wolfensberger puts it, in a nutshell, model coherency answers the question: “Are the right people being served by the right people, in the right setting, using the right tools and methods?”

Wolf Wolfensberger, PhD (1934-2011) was a long-time professor at the Syracuse University School of Education, where he was on the faculty as a full professor since 1973, and directed an independent training body, the Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership, and Change Agentry. He had been teaching and writing on the topic of this book for several decades but held off attempting to get it published until he was satisfied of its completeness and quality. At his death in early 2011, he had by and large completed the manuscript, but it needed major editing. With the cooperation of the Trust Under Will of Nancy Artz Wolfensberger, we have undertaken the editing, and this book is the result.

Human service is a complicated endeavor, in which a number of component parts must fit together and work in harmony in order to benefit the recipients. The subject of this book, model coherency, is about putting the component parts of a service together properly--coherently. As Wolfensberger puts it, in a nutshell, model coherency answers the question: “Are the right people being served by the right people, in the right setting, using the right tools and methods?”

Wolf Wolfensberger, PhD (1934-2011) was a long-time professor at the Syracuse University School of Education, where he was on the faculty as a full professor since 1973, and directed an independent training body, the Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership, and Change Agentry. He had been teaching and writing on the topic of this book for several decades but held off attempting to get it published until he was satisfied of its completeness and quality. At his death in early 2011, he had by and large completed the manuscript, but it needed major editing. With the cooperation of the Trust Under Will of Nancy Artz Wolfensberger, we have undertaken the editing, and this book is the result.

Human service is a complicated endeavor, in which a number of component parts must fit together and work in harmony in order to benefit the recipients. The subject of this book, model coherency, is about putting the component parts of a service together properly--coherently. As Wolfensberger puts it, in a nutshell, model coherency answers the question: “Are the right people being served by the right people, in the right setting, using the right tools and methods?”

This monograph deals with those interior and exterior aspects of a human service facility that have social or physical implications to a citizen's skill development, personal growth, self-image, public image, or social integration. It will not (or only tangentially) deal with physical design features that constitute access or utilization obstacles to physically handicapped persons because that issue is covered in other works..

The theoretical base for this monograph consists of an orientation to the research and theory concerned with the processes by which people value or devalue other people. As explained later, the principle of normalization is merely a systematic formulation of how to maximize the likelihood that people who have been socially defined as deviant (devalued) become socially valued or revalued. We propose that the process of systematic valuation (1.e., normalizing) is practically impossible to accomplish unless we deeply understand how devaluation (i.e., deviancy making) comes about in the first place.

This monograph is designed for members or supporters of voluntary associations (VAS) that are organized to protect or promote the welfare and interests of societally devalued people, and especially of handicapped people. Some sections will have special relevance to VAS on behalf of developmentally impaired people (such as the mentally retarded), but most of the monograph will be relevant to most VAS on behalf of devalued people, whether handicapped or not.

This monograph supersedes an earlier one entitled The Third Stage in the Evolution of Voluntary Associations for the Mentally Retarded (Wolfensberger, 1973b; for German edition, see Wolfensberger, 1977b). The content of this monograph is about triple that of its predecessor, includes new topics, and is generalized for relevance beyond the area of mental retardation..

This major treatise redefines and completely updates the principle of normalization as it relates to community services, it provides a welcome clarification of the term normalization, presents implications of normalization pertinent to community service systems, assesses accomplishments of normalization to date, and includes the first and only comprehensive bibliography of the normalization literature.

As they age, many people lose valued social roles and their value in the eyes of others and this opens a big door to other bad things happening to them. They get cast into negative roles, such as burdensome, dependent, child once again, or object of pity. They get surrounded by negative imagery that interprets them as useless, sick, and as good as dead. They get rejected and put at physical and social distance from the larger society. These things lead to declines in competence and health, reduced well-being, even abbreviation of life itself.

This book addresses the plight of older people by looking at how they are valued in society, and the roles they are given and permitted to fill. It proposes the creation and the support of valued social roles for older people as key to their getting and holding on to the good things of life. This is embodied in a service principle called Social Role Valorization, or SRV.

Held, R., Armstrong, J., Lemay R. & Thomas, S. (Editors)  (2020) 

For Australia and New Zealand only, this book may be purchased from:

• Community Resource Unit Ltd. (Brisbane)
• Belonging Matters (Melbourne)