Special needs ministry policies: HOW do you identify individuals who might need support?

The question posed in the title might seem like an odd one, especially if you are just starting a special needs ministry. For some individuals - like those with physical impairments or obvious outward features of a disability, such as those with Down syndrome - it's not hard to identify the presence of a disability. For others who have less obvious special needs - like Kim's daughter from Friday's guest post - it could be hard to know if a person might need more support.

(And, by the way, I have written about this before and shared an earlier draft of our policy there. This is more detailed and updated than that post, though there are couple spots of redundancy, for which I apologize!)

Won't families let us know? Why do we need to do anything proactively?

Honestly, when I began coordinating Access Ministry at Providence, this "how" element didn't occur to me. I knew we have a handful of kids who needed support who had already been identified, and I knew we already had a class for adults with disabilities. Those kids and adults, though, all had visible disabilities.

Some families will let you know. Some won't. Some will let someone else know - a Sunday school teacher, a pastor, a youth leader, or even the greeter at the door.

Some will do what one of our families did: have several conversations about difficult behavior in class with the child's teacher before mentioning, "well, he does have autism." Those teachers had no idea until then. They were flummoxed by the child's behavior but, with no background in special needs and no indication of a diagnosis, the teachers just handled the behavioral difficulties in the same day they had handled misbehavior in the past, not realizing there was more going on.

In an example like that last one, you may not be able to do anything to get the parents to disclose the diagnosis of their child right away. That's why it's crucial to demonstrate grace to everyone you encounter. No one is an inconvenience. No one. No one. Breed that mentality in your children's ministry and youth ministry and adult ministries at your church. You don't know anyone's full story. Think about how you would feel if you had a sign around your neck with your full story. It's tough to be vulnerable. If you expect every person to disclose every special need on day one, then you're expecting them to be vulnerable.

Vulnerability grows from trust. Is your church a place that breeds trust? In other words, is your ministry fully directed by the One who is ultimately trustworthy, or are you trying to run it from your own flesh and strength and energy?

So... How do you identify individuals who need support?

I'll paste the section about that from our guidebook  below, but first let me share a couple of things I do that aren't in the written policies:

1. I aim to make sure all of our ministry team members know about Access Ministry. Our church is large, and it is housed in a former hotel building, with the old ballroom as our worship center and the hotel rooms as our classrooms. (We got rid of the bar less than a decade ago, and this past year we removed the check-in desk in the lobby as we renovated the main areas.) I mention all that to emphasize that not everyone knows who I am and what we do. Beyond that, not everyone knows where to find me. I couldn't assume that people knew what we did or how to respond if an individual with special needs showed up or called the church. As a starting point, make sure you inform everyone involved in welcoming people as they arrive because those are the folks who may have first interaction before you ever meet the person or family. Same goes for informing whoever answers the phone during the week, so they know what to do.
2. I submit to God's sovereignty. I won't know every disability represented in our church. I can't control every element. I can't be fully trustworthy. I simply can't do it myself. And I don't have to. God can. And he's the best one to do it.

Now to our written policy:

Identification of individuals with special needs

We do our best to identify individuals with special needs who may need additional support to function well in our church body. Some disabilities, though, are not immediately obvious in appearance. Additionally, others are manifested by behaviors that seem disobedient or intentional. And some individuals, especially some of our youngest participants, may have special needs that haven’t been diagnosed yet. Because of this, show grace to each person you encounter.

If we find out that an individual in your class has a disability or other special needs, we will let you know. If a parent or individual shares with you that he/she or his/her child has a disability or other diagnosed special need or that the child is going through the process of diagnosis, please let the Access Ministry coordinators or a Family Discipleship staff member know and do not assume that we already know.

Is there anything I've left out here? How do you identify individuals who need support at your church or, if you don't serve in special needs ministry, how do you think that could be done well?

Weekly round-up! {8/1/11}

What?!? It's August? Anyone else feel like they're not quite sure how that happened?

Invisible: Yes, this is the post from my blog on Friday. I'm linking back to it. Kim did a fantastic and heartfelt job of describing her family's recent visit to another church and the challenges that can arise from such visits for families with special needs. If you haven't read it, go. Now. I promise this post will still be here when you get back.

This article from Education Week highlights the usefulness of physically acting out texts as a way for kids to learn more effectively. This applies to kids and adults with special needs as well, and you could certainly use this knowledge in your next Bible story lesson: Don't just tell it; help them act it out!

Decades after ADA became a law, disabled people are still fighting for full inclusion (and, might I add, person-first language in headlines, but that's another topic...): I spend a lot of time exhorting the church to welcome people with special needs. But let's also acknowledge that it's not just church culture but also secular culture that fails sometimes and succeeds others in this area.

I love this quote from my friend Wanda's post about making sure outreach activities are centered on the gospel and not the outreach. This is what a young women at their after-school tutoring ministry said to her: “The ministry where I serve does tutoring and sticks Jesus in. You do Jesus and stick tutoring in.” Let the latter be true of special needs ministry as well.

Pray for Shepherds Ministries, a Christian-centered organization dedicated to helping people with intellectual disabilities as they lost some funding and had to cut 32 jobs. I haven't had any personal interaction with this ministry so I can't vouch for or recommend them, but I've seen their name pop up where good Christ-honoring, life-affirming things are happening.

If blogs could have BFFs, The Works of God Displayed would want to be friends with the folks over at The Gospel Coalition. Last week, one of their posts was, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made in a Fallen World. While I did like the post, I felt like it was a bit of a downer. It was scripturally sound and mostly encouraging, but I got hung up on one line as I read it: "So while some are given the devastating charge of walking through this life more physically broken than the rest, we can trust that this life is not the end of the story." Sometimes disability can feel devastating. And sometimes it just feels like part of life. (Please don't get me wrong, though. It was a good post, worth the read.)

Here's some encouraging news from Mark 2 Ministries about a camp they're involved with for children who are Deaf in the Ukraine.

Here a some suggestions from Jessica at Four plus an angel about Ways to Support Someone Who is Grieving. And, as my friend Jolene Philo would point out, parents who have children with special needs grieve too, not because their child died but because some of the dreams they had for that child may have had to die.

Next up, a post that every ministry leader needs to understand about the parent's role as advocate and that every parent needs to read to consider how to be wise advocates for your child(ren) while still being an ambassador for Christ: I called myself an advocate. But I was really an assassin. (I know this will interest Barb and Katie particularly, given conversations I had with each of you last week. Check it out, ladies!)

ADHD May Hinder Safe Street Crossing: ... but not for the reason you might think. It's not because of inattention, but related instead to the ability to process the information necessary to cross safely. Time management problem for individuals with ADHD are often viewed as an attention problem, but this study (albeit with a small sample) suggests that it's more of a problem with executive function, the ability to process information and make judgments to control behavior in response. For church leaders, this is helpful to know because we're not understanding fully what's going on with our members with ADHD if we just think about it as an attention issue.

When kids laugh at another kid who happens to have special needs, that's not okay. When it's the adults who are laughing, I don't have the words to convey my emotions. Here's a post about adults doing just that: Don't Laugh at Me on the SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder) Blogger Network

Amy Fenton Lee is a gem of resources for special needs ministry. She aims to equip folks who are doing what I'm doing in local churches. And for that, I am thankful. Here are some wonderful posts of hers in the past week:

• Special Needs Ministry Checklist at Ministry-to-Children.com, the blog of another gifted supporter of church-based ministry, Tony Kummer
• A post about the special needs ministry entrance at Stonebriar Community Church
• A post about the special needs ministry check-in board at the same church
• A post about the special needs ministry classroom at the same church
• And more posts coming this week from her visit at Stonebriar. Make sure these are on your radar!

Is it possible to give too much praise to preschoolers? Good tips on giving specific, person-affirming praise to preschoolers (much of which applies to some older individuals with special needs too)

And you know I love to end by highlighting some churches who are welcoming people with disabilities:

• one that hosted an Autism Speak Walk as one of many things they did to rally around one family at their church after the four-year-old was diagnosed with autism
• one that is hosting an Eagle Scout project to raise awareness about autism
• one social ministry of a denomination that offers therapeutic horseback riding for children and adults with disabilities
• an article describing one church as having "exuberant hospitality" for people with special needs and others
• one church that is reaching out to kids with special needs through a kickball outreach
• a church's ministry, called Unveiled, that involves adults with disabilities in teaching the children's classes
• a church gate collection to raise money for guide dogs that took place in Ireland this past weekend (and it's interesting to me that these types of collections are done regularly in parts of Ireland as a way for the church to partner with community organizations)

And, if you're still reading now, THANK YOU! I know this week's round-up was a long one. I hope you'll come back later this week as I dive into special needs ministry policy and share with you a mini-lesson I'll be teaching next Sunday to our typical seventh grade Sunday school class.

Different members. One body. {1 Cor 12:12-26}

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

1 Corinthians 12:12-26, ESV

Fridays from the Families: Invisible

title: No66 19 mar 09 Invisible photographer: mcfarlandmo

Our guest today is Kimberly Lavoie, the mother of a seven year old daughter with PDD-NOS and three-and-a-half year old twins. She writes about issues of special needs parenting and faith at The Simple Life. Thank you, Kimberly, for letting me share this with our readers today!
 
It is a rare Sunday that our family worships anywhere other than our home church. We attend a small church, and my husband and I are both heavily involved in lay ministry, so we try hard to be there each Sunday – often planning trips to leave Sunday after church and return Saturday night.

Last weekend we were visiting with some dear friends and didn’t have to be at our church, so we visited their church. It is larger than ours with a well-organized children’s program. I mistakenly thought my oldest daughter would like being in Sunday School class with more kids her age. Maybe I didn’t prepare her enough, or maybe she was too anxious from all of the other changes to routine. For whatever reason, she balked and started saying she wouldn’t go to Sunday School before we even left our friends’ house. Sometimes she does this at home too, so we ignored her protests and calmly drove off to church and dropped her twin siblings at the preschool department. I convinced the child to come see the Sunday School room and meet the teacher before making her final choice. The teacher was doing some warm up activities with early arrivals, so it took some effort to catch her eye. She asked my daughter’s name and grade in school, then assured us we were in the right place…still seeming a little confused as to why there was any hesitation. I asked her to explain what they would be doing in Sunday School hoping that one of the activities would grab my daughter’s attention and entice her into the room. No such luck. We said goodbye to the teacher and went to find our friends in the worship center. She seemed relieved and I decided maybe this was the better choice if she was really that anxious about it. We walk a fine line with the child in church – too bored or too stimulated (by anxiety or excitement) – either way can lead to a meltdown. I knew I could keep her engaged somehow during church; dropping her against her will in a new situation was playing with fire.

As we settled into our seats I noticed with my peripheral vision a young man sitting a few rows behind us. With a brief glance I could see that he had some special needs, too. There was an older woman sitting with him to give him support. I didn’t sit and study him or his caregiver, but it was obvious that they needed understanding and care. It seemed he was perhaps non-verbal as I heard some vocalization later in the service that was indistinct, though probably entirely understood by his companion. Meanwhile, my daughter was doing her best to behave. Sandwiched between mom and dad, she buried her face into Daddy’s backside while we were standing to sing. I decided she needed some sensory input, so I sat next to her and squeezed tightly giving her some pressure on her arms, legs, and even on her head. This seemed to calm her down. She enjoyed the music, though we didn’t know most of the songs. During the sermon I found her some paper and a pen, and she doodled away for the rest of the service. We saw the young man later being pushed in a wheelchair by the same woman. I smiled at them to try to communicate my empathy.

I keep pondering this whole experience – while I could see with a glance that the young man who sat behind us needed special care, our family’s need for the extra measure of support and encouragement went unnoticed. I don’t want to level any sort of complaint at our host church. They had no way of knowing our situation, which is my point. It’s more that I want to draw a lesson for my own ministry and others. We may never know which family needs that extra smile or reassurance. We may not know who needs some encouragement or understanding. I hope I am always open to listen, and more importantly I want my eyes to be sensitive enough even to see the invisible.

Special needs ministry policies: Start with the WHY

This post is part of a series on special needs ministry policies. Please see yesterday's post for a little more context: Your special needs ministry policies are worthless if they only live on a shelf.

When someone asks about policies, they're usually asking about how our ministry works - what we do, what our procedures are, how we handle certain circumstances. However, it is just as important – for everyone on your team, from staff to volunteers and even to yourself – to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. What’s the point? What’s our mission? What do we want to accomplish? What does the Bible have to say about this? What qualifies as a “special need” anyway?

You need policies, but you also need a purpose. That's why our policies are called the Access Ministry Guidebook, with the subheading Purposes, Policies, and Procedures to Enable Ministry. The "how" aspects of your policies do matter, and I’m working on many of those pieces right now for our guidebook. We do need to document what the plan is when a new family arrives and how to handle bathroom needs in special needs ministry settings. We do need to outline how to handle common issues. We do need to define rations of adults to children in various settings. All those "how" elements do matter. If you only include the what and the why without the how, then you'll have a concept with no practical application. 

Our policies start with the what and the why and then dive into the how. The first five sections are listed below and linked to previous posts in which I discussed the topic.

1. The church’s mission/vision statement. My church has placed a great deal of trust in me as I lead Access Ministry with my husband. As a reminder that we operate within our church body and as part of that larger vision statement, we put that in the forefront. Because we're technically part of what we call "family discipleship ministry" at our church, we also have included the purpose statement for that ministry area. 
2. The special needs ministry mission statement and goals. We have tweaked this a little from when I posted it, but it's still close to what you'll find here.
3. The biblical foundation for special needs ministry. I usually put this first in any communication we have, because what the Bible has to say is far more important than what we've set as our mission statements. However, we've found that (a) it helps for our folks to have a little context for why these verses fuel our ministry and (b) that when verses are listed first, many people skip past the verses to find the meat of the guidebook (overlooking the fact that the meatiest parts are those verses!). That's why the biblical foundation is section three in our guide. It isn't exactly like this post, but that's one of the places we started from. Also, you might want to check out my Scripture Saturday posts in which I post verses related to special needs ministry.
4. Clarifying note: Ministering with NOT ministering to: The wording of this post is very similar to the wording of our policy on this.
5. What are “special needs” anyway? I realized that many of our volunteers were asking this question. See below for how we've answered it.

Defining special needs can be tricky. Here’s the draft from our guidebook about that topic:

While the educational definition of disability includes 13 handicapping conditions and the federal definition for adults is even broader than that, we aren’t concerned with every one of those categories. What we do care about is people, and we primarily focus on those disabilities and special needs that could hinder an individual’s involvement in our church body. For example, we need to know about food allergies, particularly for those who are too young to protect themselves, because we do serve snacks and other food at times and we want to keep individuals with allergies safe. If an individual’s mobility is limited in some way, then we wouldn’t ask him or her to climb the stairs and we would want to be intentional about involving him or her during game times or outside play times instead of, for example, parking the wheelchair in a corner and ignoring the person. If a disability impacts a person’s behavior or ability to learn, play, or interact with others, then we may need to make some accommodation or modification for their involvement in our church.

Many special needs have names – like autism, Down syndrome, seizure disorders, cerebral palsy, and others. While it is helpful to know those names, it is more important to know the individual. Each label is an attribute of a real individual created by God and not the defining characteristic for that person.

You'll see that I answered the question and sidestepped it all at once. Why? Well, the definition of "special need" in a church setting can vary depending on the context and stage. For example, a child with Down syndrome at our church - I'll call him "Jeremy" - is in elementary school and needs a one-on-one buddy to support him in his class; without that support, there would be barriers to his involvement in class. When Jeremy was two, though, the developmental differences between him and his same-aged peers weren't significant; Jeremy didn't have any barriers to involvement then, so he didn't need much extra support from Access Ministry. On the other hand, we have another elementary student who has Down syndrome and does just fine in her grade's class without any support; even though she's older than Jeremy, her needs are different. You see, it's not the disability label that requires support; it's the needs of the individual.

Tomorrow I'll be sharing a fantastic guest post with you (so excited!), and next week I'll dive into the "how" parts of our guidebook.

Finally, if you're thinking, "wow, I would love a copy of this Access Ministry Guidebook!" ... be encouraged! As soon as it is complete and has been reviewed by some colleagues, I'll be sharing it here at no charge. I would love to help equip other churches - your church, perhaps! - in special needs ministry. I'm willing and eager to share anything we're learning at Providence to help other churches.

~+~
And a couple of quick logistical notes: 
(1) I've added the option to subscribe via email. I've always had a feed which provided this option, but I recently realized that it wasn't a simple process to subscribe, especially if you're not tech-savvy. If you want my posts to come to your inbox, enter your email in the box on the right, just under my picture and bio. You'll have to complete a couple of additional quick steps after that, but it's a painless process! 
(2) I'm thinking about adding one book review - related to special needs ministry - every week or every other week. I think it could be helpful, but I have a few concerns. I would LOVE to get your input on any/all of these:

• I am critical of several of them - though not all! - and I don't want to become one of those ministry bloggers who tears others down with my words. I know I can disagree in a civil way, but is it a good idea?
• I have been toying with the idea of writing my own book. Would it be in poor taste to publicly discuss other books? My concern is that I don't want any critiques to seem as if I'm just being critical so I can later say, "...and this is why you should buy my book." (Am I overthinking this?)
• Currently I post the weekly round-up every Monday, a guest post at least a couple Fridays a month, and a passage from the Bible every Saturday, with Sunday as the blog's day of rest. Adding a regular book review would take one of the remaining days. Is it worth it?  

Thanks!