Introduction to PASSING

This five-day workshop is for those who are interested in deepening their knowledge about the principles of Social Role Valorization. This workshop involves learning to use the PASSING assessment tool, which looks at the realities of Social Role Valorization in practice. It emphasizes the impact of services on the lives of the people being served and provides an opportunity to craft a vision of a good service and the foundation from which to design relevant and effective support, service, advocacy, and assess service quality. The work of PASSING is done in teams, visiting a residential and a “day” service, meeting the people being served, and conducting interviews with service administrators. The workshop involves extensive personal reflection and analysis, group conciliation, and thought-provoking discussion. The week’s work is conducted under the guidance of an experienced team leader.

Prior attendance at a three- or four-day Introduction to a full Social Role Valorization theory course, either online or in-person, is required to register for this event.

This workshop includes long days and late nights. Participants may check in after 3:00 pm on October 20, 2024.

Venue

Courtyard By Marriot Boston Raynham
37 Paramount Drive
Raynham, MA 02767 United States

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PASSING Faculty  

Marc Tumeinski, PhD

Marc Tumeinski, PhD, is coordinator of the SRV Implementation Project. He teaches workshops based in Social Role Valorization. As a service worker, he supported children and adults with mental disorders, as well as physical and intellectual impairments, to have valued social roles at home, school and work. Marc has evaluated a variety of human service programs in North America, including several Citizen Advocacy programs. He has worked with families and agency staff to think about what might be ideal for someone receiving services, and has led planning sessions on how to move towards that ideal. Marc has a strong interest in analyzing the problem of violence in services, and he has written articles critiquing the use of restrictive practices and restraint. He has presented on these topics in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. Marc’s current work with SRV focuses on PASSING and on Model Coherency. He is the founding Editor of The SRV Journal, and of the later supplement SRV News and Reviews, which contains original articles, vignettes, book and film reviews on topics related to Social Role Valorization and PASSING. He is a member of the North American SRV Training, Development and Safeguarding Council, and meets with other SRV teachers from across North America twice a year. He also belongs to the study groups surrounding Wolfensberger’s advanced topics. Marc has presented at several international SRV conferences. He and his wife Jo Massarelli offer their home in downtown Worcester, Massachusetts (US) providing hospitality for poor and homeless people.

Erica Baker-Tinsley

Erica Baker-Tinsley is a Professor and Coordinator of the Developmental Services Worker Program at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Before beginning her teaching career, she worked as a Family Support Coordinator providing support to people with intellectual disabilities and their families. It was through that work that Erica was first introduced to Social Role Valorization. Over the past 25 years, she has been involved in teaching SRV to service workers, administrators, families, and students at both high school and post-secondary levels. In addition to SRV, Erica is passionate about community development approaches that build strong communities where all members are welcomed and supported. Through her involvement in various non-profit organizations, Erica has engaged in advocacy work promoting inclusive education, food security, and affordable, secure housing. Erica has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Disability Studies from Ryerson University and a Master of Arts Degree in Community Development from the University of Victoria. She is currently a Board Director of the Southern Ontario Training Group, and a member of the Social Role Valorization Development, Training and Safeguarding Council.

Pam Seetoo

Pam Seetoo has worked to assist people to live rich, full community lives since 1990. Over the course of her life’s work, she has assisted people to leave institutions and establish themselves in their communities, supported children and families within foster care and host home programs, provided service leadership, and focused on values-based education and facilitation.

Throughout her career, Pam has worked to educate others about the effects of social devaluation of vulnerable populations. She facilitates many presentations at a variety of Social Role Valorization (SRV) and related workshops, leads small group learning and has been a team leader at PASSING events. She develops and organizes an extraordinary employee development program for the Keystone Institute and serves as a mentor and role model to many others. She has a strong interest in preserving and safeguarding the personal histories of people with disability and has developed workshops around this topic. Pam has been accredited as an SRV teacher by the North American Social Role Valorization Council.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Neuville

Elizabeth “Betsy” Neuville serves dual roles as Executive Director of the Keystone Institute and Director of Keystone Institute India. She has over 30 years of experience as a human service worker, administrator, agency director, evaluator, educator, and personal advocate, as well as extensive experience in designing and developing supports for people with disability, meaningful quality measurements, and extraordinary employee development programs.

She began her work with people with disability in 1986 as a support worker in a small community home for three men who had recently left an institution, and has continued her commitment to personal human service ever since. In 1988, she was hired by Keystone Human Services to help 20 people leave institutions and establish themselves in their home communities in Pennsylvania, US. She spent her first year with those 20 people and their families planning and envisioning new lives outside the institution, and she continue to walk alongside them as they entered their new lives and created a positive future.

Betsy served as Executive Director for KHS’s office in Lancaster, PA for many years, designing and directing supports for adults and children with developmental disabilities and/or mental disorders. She has assisted hundreds of people to leave institutions and begin lives as valued and contributing members of their communities. Equally important, she has been involved with the closure of several large governmental institutions, and she established the use of person-directed processes to assist people to envision full, rich community lives. She played an important role in building KHS’s reputation as an organization that will successfully support people whom others have given up on. She has mentored a great number of passionate change agents to carry on this work.

Betsy has worked extensively with the ideas of Normalization and Social Role Valorization (SRV) and provides training and consultation both nationally and internationally. She is fully accredited by the North American Social Role Valorization Council as a senior trainer of SRV. She has taught SRV and PASSING in Canada, across the United States, Ireland, the UK, Holland, Turkey, India, Azerbaijan, Romania, and the Republic of Moldova. She studied under the mentorship of Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger, the developer and foremost proponent of Social Role Valorization, and has, in turn, mentored and supported a generation of people committed to personal human service to others. She remains closely connected to people with disability, and holds particular interest in the historical treatment of people with disabilities.

She began using the tools and techniques of Person Directed Planning in 1992 to help people move toward better lives, and has extensively studied and used the work of Beth Mount in Personal Futures Planning and Jack Pearpoint in PATH and MAPS. She has taught Person Directed Planning techniques across North America, and in deinstitutionalization projects in Romania, the Republic of Moldova, and Azerbaijan. She has developed techniques which merge traditional Person Directed Planning with Social Role Valorization and Model Coherency, increasing the likelihood that such processes will identify and meet true needs, as well as incorporate valued social roles. In 2013, she co-wrote the implementation plan for best practice in Person Directed Planning and positive behavior support for the class action settlement agreement Jensen v State of Minnesota, and has extensively evaluated current practice in this area for the federal court monitor.

She also develops material and teaches on many topics beyond SRV and Person Directed Planning, including Hospitality, American Eugenics, Moral Treatment, Organizational Values in Action, and many other areas. She leads the Keystone Institute in their work of developing top quality workshops and events relating to not only what their work is all about, but why it really matters.

Betsy divides her time equally between India and the US.

Karin Bonesteel

Karin Bonesteel currently works as the Director of Community Living for The Nemasket Group, Inc., in Fairhaven, Massachusetts (US). Karin has a BA in Psychology and an MA in Social Work. Karin began her work in human services as a direct care worker in northern New York at an Intermediate Care Facility for 12 people. She moved on to work at Rensselaer County ARC in 1986; first as a direct support worker and then as a case manager. It was there that she first began to study the principles of normalization and attended a PASS workshop. She started teaching Wolfensberger’s work while in New York, and is currently recognized by the North American SRV Council as a Social Role Valorization teacher.

Karin moved to Massachusetts in 1992 where she went to work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation as a Program Director, directly involved in the closing of the Dever Developmental Center and the building of the community system. Karin has studied Citizen Advocacy in depth and was involved with a group of citizens on Cape Cod trying to start a Citizen Advocacy Program. Karin coordinates and teaches workshops for families, direct support staff and other concerned parties on how to help vulnerable people to have socially valued roles.

Since beginning at The Nemasket Group in 2012, Karin has worked to help the people she oversees supports for to have valued social roles and to embed the practice, language, and principles of SRV within the day-to-day operational culture of the organization.