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 can check into the hotel on the afternoon of Sunday October 19, 2025.

Register

Venue:
Spark by Hilton Lancaster
150 Granite Run Drive
Lancaster, PA 17601

(Please note, the hotel is in the process of switching from a Fairfield by Marriot to Spark by Hilton Lancaster.)

PASSING Faculty

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 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 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.

Maggie Jacobson

Maggie Jacobson is the Director of Training at Community Ventures in Living, a non-profit human service agency in Lafayette, Indiana. She is deeply committed to supporting people to have access to full, meaningful lives through valued social roles.

Maggie was first introduced to SRV in the late 1990s as a student in high school and has been continuing this education ever since. She is passionate about facilitating learning opportunities for others and believes that the concepts of SRV can help build truly integrative communities for all.

Maggie lives in Louisville, Kentucky with her husband, daughter, and two grumpy pets.