Assisting
Independence
Continued
Kent State students help group home residents learn everything from crossing the street to cooking dinner.
by Tim Bugansky
photos by Allison Waltz
When the men at Meridian sit down to dinner around 4:30 p.m., Burick leaves and passes by the Highland women's group home a few blocks away. Highland is currently without a resident manager, so Burick is filling the position in addition to his regular duties at Meridian.
At Highland, the three habilitation aides are still bustling around preparing
dinner for their residents. The kitchen is a flurry of motion, a symphony
of clanging pots and rattling dishes.
Marne Patterson couldn't stay away from Highland, she says as she puts the finishing touches on the evening's chicken and biscuits.
Patterson graduated from Kent State in December 1999 with a degree in special education. She has a full-time teaching job now, but she still returns to her college job at Highland a few days every week.
"Nobody can leave
for good," Patterson says with a smile as she butters a
biscuit.
The food is ready, and the table is set. The habilitation aides call the consumers to dinner. Nine hungry women, many of them already milling around the area, take their places in the dining room.
Habilitation aide
Christine Palkovic, a pathology major at Kent State, walks around dishing
out food on each plate. She sits down to eat with Diane, a consumer who
has seated herself at a small round table in the kitchen's alcove. Surrounded
by potted plants and a view of the side lawn, Palkovic and Diane chat
softly and eat their dinner.
Palkovic says she heard about Independence in an ad in the Daily Kent
Stater.
"I came to work here to see if I could handle working with this
population," Palkovic says. "I knew I could work with kids, and I worked
at a nursing home before, so I know I can work with older people."
At 5:30 p.m. Patterson passes the dessert bowls, then makes a second trip to serve pineapple. Diane finishes her dessert, while Palkovic gets up and helps several of the consumers wash the dishes.
Palkovic works twice a week from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. She also works every other weekend from 7:30 a.m to 3:30 p.m. She admits the job can be stressful, but she says she has learned a lot from working at Highland.
She has realized that people without disabilities often take basic skills for granted. She says she also learned how to take the consumers' feelings into consideration. The women at Highland are adults, and it is up to the habilitation aides to treat them as such.
"You have to have the understanding that even though they have developmental disabilities, and they have been diagnosed with the mental level of a 3-year-old, you can't treat them like a 3-year-old," she says.
By 6 p.m., the dining
room has been cleared of all dishes. The floor is clean, and only a few
crumbs remain on the table. Palkovic is busy scrubbing dishes at the sink.
While a lot of tasks are involved with the job, Palkovic says the most
important skill for working with developmentally disabled individuals
is a basic one.
"Patience," she says. "Lots of patience."