Developing Adult Day Hab Programs

Geneva J. Chapman, 3411 N. Detroit Ave., Toledo, Ohio 43610 (419) 244-4303 PATHS Portfolio Product

Professional Development Statement

My personal philosophy is that service surpasses all other pursuits. I believe that each of us is given
talents, abilities, and insights that are best used in the service of humanity and that those who fulfill that mission
lead the most rewarding lives. My family has provided me with great examples of human service. My great-
grandfather was a Baptist preacher and founded a church in a rural community in central Texas, assisting his
parishioners and anyone else who needed his help. His youngest daughter, my grandmother, met my
grandfather at college and when they graduated they got married and bought the land next to my great-
grandparents and my grandfather, a shop teacher, built their house. They spent their lives being of service to
their community.
I was born in the house my grandfather built and reared there during most of my childhood, during
which I was a member of the church my great-grandfather founded. My grandparents’ oldest child, my mother,
married a Baptist preacher and she and my father were actively involved in helping the various communities
where my father pastored as civil rights activists and service providers in various fields. I am proud of all the
service my family has given and am striving to follow their example using natural talents that include
communication skills, people skills, and an affinity for instructing others and helping people learn needed skills.
I have also acquired many skills that qualify me to work in the human service field through educational training
and actual job experience.
At various times I have considered becoming an entertainer, a lawyer, a veterinarian, a nurse, a
doctor, and a biologist. My dreams of becoming an entertainer were crushed early in life when my
grandmother, an elementary school teacher who reared me and was my legal guardian, learned of them and
told me in no uncertain terms to forget about anything but going to college. I wanted to be a veterinarian
when I went to college on a Valedictorian scholarship that the state of Texas offers, but my grandmother didn’t
think that was a suitable occupation for a female; so I majored in nursing for one whole semester, then decided
if I was going into medicine I might as well be a doctor.
I majored in pre-med for a semester and learned that advanced sciences like physics and organic
chemistry were beyond my grasp, so when I moved to Oklahoma to live with my parents, I changed colleges
and majors, going back to nursing for one more semester. Then I decided to become a research biologist and
continued with this major until my senior year in college. The summer prior to my senior year, I had a class in
vascular aquatic plants that was so difficult, I decided not to become a biologist. I changed my major my senior
year to English, my best subject, and took five English classes each semester to meet the ten-course
requirement for the degree.
Meanwhile, most of my electives had been in social sciences, so that, along with biology, became my
minor. I graduated with the hope of securing a position as a newspaper reporter, having been editor-in-chief of
one college newspaper and a columnist in the other one. However, I was told I didn’t have the experience
required when I applied for a job at the daily paper in the small Kansas town where my parents moved to my
senior year in college and where I moved after graduation.
I did get a job working in a remedial reading lab at the middle school where my three younger
siblings were enrolled and was offered the opportunity to apply for an internship in a masters of education
program. I became a Teacher Corps intern and attended Wichita State University where I graduated with a
Masters of Education Degree in Elementary Education and became a teacher in the Wichita Public Schools. I
left teaching after seven years when I became disheartened that the gifted children I taught for three years had
very little interest in learning and only seem to care about doing enough to meet the requirements.
I moved to Ohio and worked part time as an educational consultant for a textbook company and as a
volunteer coordinator at a homeless shelter in Columbus. Mrs. Charlotte Zeigler gave me the opportunity to
move to Toledo and work in the field of MR/DD and I lived in a group home with six adult males for three
months. Once I was introduced to the field by working as a DSP, I became a QMRP and then a behavior
support consultant at Zeigler’s ICF-MR while working part time also as a family life educator in a pregnancy
prevention program piloted in two Toledo junior high schools. I did that for a year, and then got another part
time job working as a staff writer for a local weekly newspaper.

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I applied for a fulltime position with the Lucas County Board of MR/DD and was hired to work with
students with behavior concerns in the board’s school, as well as children and adults on the county buses. I also
worked with seniors when the school population decreased and was the SBH teacher the last year the school
was open. When the school closed, I became a habilitation specialist at one of the county’s sheltered workshops
and a professional mentor.
Meanwhile, I became certified to teach the thirty-hour seminar class in behavior support and applied
for admission to an early intervention degree program and I completed an Educational Specialist Degree at The
University of Toledo in Special Education. I also started working part time as a journalist at a weekly newspaper
after working as a free lance journalist for over ten years.
I was accepted in a management training program after nearly fourteen years working for the board. I
interviewed for a manager’s job during my training and was hired as a habilitation coordinator. I managed as
many as twenty staff during the year I worked in this capacity. I retired from the board after sixteen and a half
years and returned to Zeigler to work as a consultant.
My educational training and varied job experience gives me a great deal of knowledge about MR/DD
and the various approaches to providing quality service and individualized support to individuals I serve. As a
hab coordinator, I was given the task of developing day hab curriculum to replace production work and was so
successful in changing the production work floor culture from “work” to “habilitation, I have written a
curriculum guide on the subject which I hope to publish.
I have over thirty years of experience as an educator with specialized skills in behavior support,
communication training, curriculum development, and staff development and training. I plan to use my skills
and knowledge to develop curricula for adult day hab programs. A year from now, I plan to have my first
curriculum guide published and in two years, I plan to develop a new type of day hab program. In five years, I
hope to have that program packaged and start providing certification training for day hab providers seeking
licensure for my adult day hab program.
I need to put my program in written form, develop the training and certification protocols, and
establish the licensure procedures. In order to accomplish this, I will have to learn more about the certification
and licensing process and how to establish copyrights and trademarks. I will mostly likely hire a copyright
lawyer and seek assistance from experts in certification and licensure.
Writing this portfolio gives me the opportunity to put my plans and the skills I bring to this effort
down on paper and to assess the strengths I already have and those I need to meet my goals. The work sample I
am most proud of is the communication sample because it shows how my various skills were used to assist an
individual with impaired communication skills and how I assessed her needs, identified an alternative to her
inappropriate behavior, effectively taught the alternative behavior, and assisted her to communicate her needs.
This is my ultimate goal: to provide service that will improve and enrich the lives of those I serve.

Competency Area: Communication

I developed a communication program that replaced a consumer’s inappropriate behavior to request
and object or activity with an appropriate means of communication. This sample demonstrates my skills in
assessing communication skills, behavior modification, providing individualized instruction and support, and
providing communication training. An individual who was unable to communicate her needs appropriately,
“acted out” when she wanted something at her residence and while in school. This behavior was reinforced
when she received the desired object or activity by residential and school staff. She was released from school
early due to her behavioral outbursts and was placed in my habilitation room at a county board adult services
center. I saw that she used inappropriate behavior (hand-biting, arching her back, falling on the floor, hitting
herself, etc.) to communicate her desires.
She acted out initially to obtain one of two things: something to drink or going for a walk. Rather than
reinforcing her acting-out behavior, I redirected her to a favorite bean bag to self-calm. Once she was calm, I
offered her an empty Styrofoam cup to see if she wanted a drink. She took the cup the first time, thinking I was
giving her a drink and became agitated when she saw that the cup was empty, but I indicated that she should
give me the cup, which she did willingly and I poured water in it and gave it back to her. We repeated this

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procedure every time she wanted a drink, until she started going to get an empty cup to give me to
communicate that she wanted a drink. I reinforced her appropriate communication every time she
demonstrated it.
I repeated the same procedure when she wanted a walk, which she usually showed by trying to leave
the room, then acting out when she was redirected. I redirected her to her favorite bean bag each time and
once she was calm, gave her a shoe she removed every day when she arrived, indicating she should give it to me
so I could put it on her foot. She resisted at first, but once she found out that once the shoe was on, I would
take her for a walk, she stopped getting agitated and was soon bringing me her shoe to indicate that she wanted
to go for a walk. Having worked as a behavior support specialist, I knew reinforcement of an appropriate
behavior as an alternative to inappropriate behavior, after identifying what need the inappropriate behavior met
and an appropriate alternative behavior that could be taught and reinforced to meet the identified need, would
eliminate the inappropriate behavior. Using my behavior training, I identified the motivation for the
inappropriate behavior, how often it occurred, and how to redirect the individual to self-calm so that teaching
could take place.
My last task was to identify an alternative behavior that would communicate her desire for a drink or
to go for a walk. I made sure that the alternative behaviors were natural ones that would be associated with the
desired results. I then developed a plan for teaching the alternative behavior, which consisted of giving her an
object that she could use to indicate what she wanted since she had no language skills, either verbal or gestural
(sign). I followed the teaching plan, reinforcing all occurrences of the alternative behavior until it was learned
Quite often non-verbal individuals use inappropriate behavior to communicate a need or desire and if this
behavior is reinforced or ‘conditioned,’ it becomes a learned behavior. The inappropriate behavior, which is the
individual’s only means of getting a need or want met many times, cannot be changed until an appropriate
alternative behavior can be identified and taught to the individual by reinforcing the alternative behavior every
time it is exhibited initially. Once the new behavior is learned, the old behavior is no longer needed.

Competency Area: Community Living Skills & Supports

This work sample demonstrates my ability to recognize strengths of staff and channel them into the
right areas, nurturing staff growth and development, as well as providing staff with opportunities to become
leaders and more effective DSPs that provide innovative service for our consumers.
There are a number of consumers at my former adult day hab center who have Type II Diabetes. It was
brought to the attention of the management team at the center that a diabetes class was being taught at another
center in the same agency; the hab spec, SASS, interpreter, and residential provider of a consumer with
diabetes suggested having a similar class at our center after the interpreter who works at all of the agency’s
adult hab centers informed the ISP team about the class. Our facility manager asked for a hab coordinator to
assume the responsibility of getting the class started. I volunteered since I was the supervisor assigned to
enrichment activities.
Although the center had an enrichment specialist who provided in-house enrichment activities, very
few classes that were organized by the enrichment specialist were successful, so I decided to talk to the four
staff at the center that had Type II Diabetes about teaching the class. Two of the staff were degreed professionals
and two were non-degreed professionals. However, one of the non-degreed professionals had worked with me
as a hab tech when I was a hab specialist and had shown exceptional leadership in her area, attending all ISPs,
contacting residential staff, and working effectively with ten individuals with behavioral concerns for a number
of years.
I talked to all four staff and the degreed professionals agreed to support the class, but due to their
large caseloads, could not commit to teaching it. I didn’t expect them to; however, one of them, along with one
of the non-degreed professionals, has an entrepreneurial venture in their area: a food cart that offers consumers
and staff snack and lunch items for purchase. I suggested perhaps they could identify which items on the cart
were foods that people with Type II Diabetes could eat without raising their blood sugar levels. However, I
asked my former hab tech to teach the class. The two of us visited the class at the other adult day hab center

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and determined that the enrichment specialist who taught it used community resources, such as nutritionists
and nurses trained as diabetic educators.
I named the class “Healthy Habits” and the hab tech proceeded to identify individuals at our adult hab
center who have diabetes with the help of the hab specs. She held an introductory class to explain what the
purpose of the class would be and what they could expect to learn. She also recruited a parent who is a
diabetic, as well as a service and support specialist to volunteer. The first session was a huge success. Over
twenty consumers attended and the parent volunteer brought in healthy snacks: raw vegetables, fresh fruit, and
bottled water. She also brought in a sweet pastry and the consumers were advised to eat these kinds of snacks in
small quantities, as each was given one fourth of a sweet roll.
Soon, the Healthy Habits teacher brought in a succession of professionals: a dietitian, a podiatrist, a
pharmacist, and an exercise instructor. The class meets once a week for instruction and twice a week for
exercise (one of the exercise classes is facility-wide and one is just for Healthy Habits). The person I selected to
instruct the class was able to get a local sports store to donate free T-shirts for the class and she got sandwiches
for a “healthy luncheon” donated by a Subway sandwich shop in the area. The Director of Adult Options
attended the luncheon and listened in amazement as the individuals in the class answered questions asked by a
nutritionist about Type II Diabetes and how to manage it. Staff and consumers have also initiated interaction
with consumers involved in similar classes at the other two day hab centers and the senior center.
The entire class marched in a parade sponsored by the facility wearing their shirts, prompting other
individuals at the adult day hab to want to participate in a health class. An awards luncheon was planned to give
each student in the class a certificate for completing six months of diabetes training. The gala affair was held at
the Ability Center and featured healthy foods, a skit performed by students in the class, and remarks from the
director and the board’s superintendent. Parents, staff, managers, and administrators were invited and several
attended the event.
What started out as a class was developed into a complete program that continues to provide support
to individuals with Type II Diabetes. Another program was initiated by the hab tech that teaches Healthy Habits
to improve the self-esteem of female consumers in the class. Each month a licensed beautician comes out and
washes and styles hair for the ladies for a nominal fee. If anyone is unable to pay to have her hair styled, staff
donate the money to make sure each female that wants her hair done can take advantage of the onsite “beauty
shop.”
Due to the demand for a similar class from consumers who are non-diabetic, “Healthy Living” was
started to teach general health information. Consumers in both classes participate in daily voluntary lunch
checks to make sure they are bringing healthy items to work for lunch. Selected Healthy Habits students were
also instructed on how to use a blood glucose meter to check their blood sugar. Most recently, a health fair was
sponsored by both classes that included eighty-five vendors offering health-related information. The health fair
was attended by consumers and staff from all three board adult hab centers.
Consumers with Type II Diabetes are learning how to prepare healthier meals at home and watch their
eating when eating out in the community. Similar nutritional information has been provided for consumers
taking the general health class. Additionally, consumers in both classes are learning other beneficial health
practices that can be used outside of the day hab setting, including: exercising for fitness involving activities as
simple as taking a walk; self-esteem building through the beauty clinic and weight loss due to eating healthier
and improving physical fitness; and increase in cognition due to acquisition of information on health, nutrition,
and fitness. Several students in Healthy Habits have also learned to monitor their own blood sugar levels.
The health education program has provided a support group for consumers with diabetes, ongoing
education in general health for other consumers, and opportunities for interaction with consumers from other
day hab centers and opportunities to form friendships within the classes and with those in other day hab
centers with similar concerns and interests.
This program is successful and innovative and has received a great deal of attention and interest across
the county and the state. As a consultant from Cincinnati observed to the hab tech who teaches Healthy Habits
when we shared information about the class at a program-wide enrichment training, “You are saving lives.” The
consultant has also suggested that the hab tech teaching the class should train medical professionals how to
interact with adults with developmental disabilities more effectively during treatment.

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Competency Area: Documentation

This work sample demonstrates my ability to provide staff with training to understand and
improve documentation. Staff at my previous work site had difficulty understanding how to
document goals and supports on the computer. Often the documentation did not reflect the
progress made by the consumers.

Annually, habilitation coordinators for the board provide documentation training for DSPs
in several areas, including computer documentation. I created a training program to address some
of the issues that surfaced repeatedly.

My training tool consisted of a multiple-choice pre-test, followed by instruction based on
staff’s competency on the test. Many DSPs had difficulty passing the pretest, indicating their lack of
understanding of the documentation procedure.

Incorrect answers were discussed and the correct answers were given and explained.
Several DSPs with more experience who passed the pretest gave the correct answers and were able
to explain the particular documentation procedure in terms that their co-workers were able to
understand.

The result was an improvement in documentation in the facility and more accurate
information put into the computer. As a follow-up to the training, the hab coordinators checked
documentation daily to determine which DSPs were still having difficulty inputting accurate
information.

Those who continued to have difficulty were given individual instruction and were able to
understand the documentation procedure with the additional help. The result was a marked
improvement in documentation facility-wide.

I was able to engage peers to teach each other during the training, which was most effective
in facilitating understanding of the material. Peers also continued to assist those having difficulty
doing their daily documentation.

The peer instruction coupled with the individual instruction by hab coordinators
eliminated most documentation errors at the facility. Previously, the facility had pages of

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documentation errors that had to be corrected each month.

Following the initiation of the above training model, those errors were reduced to less than
one page most months. Accuracy in completing documentation increased the confidence of the
DSPs and made each one feel more capable and professional.

ISP DOCUMENTATION CHART (Compiled to Input into Computer)

Success of ISP Goals & Supports Number, Type of Prompts Used
Goals &
Supports
Goal/ Obj.# Met Not Met Not Gestural Verbal Physical
Attempted
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Support # Indicate Whether Supports Provided
1 Provided Not Prov. Not App.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

Instructions:
1. Read objective for each goal and note maximum number and type of prompts allowed in order for it to be met.

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2. Use this chart or other paper documentation to record goal success, type, and number of prompts throughout
day, as well as which supports are provided and which are not applicable (e.g., safety drills are not done every
day and will be documented as “not applicable” on days when there are no drills)
3. Use chart or other paper documentation when inputting documentation data into the computer at the end of
the day.
4. Make sure all documentation is accurate before it is sent to supervisor for approval.

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Developing Adult Day Hab Programs

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