The Next Five Years: How DD Councils Will Focus on Communities At Large
An Interview with AIDD Commissioner Aaron Bishop
The Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, along with all nationwide DD Councils, is currently working on building a new Five Year Strategic Plan to serve the developmental disability community in the State. The plan, once completed and adopted by the community and Council, will be submitted to the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD) in August for approval.
During a visit to Atlanta, AIDD Commissioner Aaron Bishop spoke to Making A Difference about what the administration is asking DD (Developmental Disability) Councils to focus on to better serve their local disability communities through services and programs.
Aaron Bishop (AB): As the AIDD commissioner, it is one of my duties to come meet DD Council directors and talk to them about the future of programming and activities, where the administration is going and what opportunities there may be for the DD Councils. The focus of this meeting is also on diversity and cultural linguistic competency that is one of our priority issues within Administration on Community Living (ACL), or specifically AIDD. We come out and talk about our expectations and infuse some of that knowledge to Council members so they see the direction in which we are going, but also learn from people to see what they’re already doing.
Making A Difference (MAD): Tell us about where the administration is going and what it would like DD Councils to do.
AB: DD Councils are in a unique position because of what they are. They’re conveners at the state level and they have the ability to bring in and bring individuals together to focus on policy issues of interest to the state and people of disabilities and/or the federal government and to see how they could combine the three together. In AIDD, we are interested in diversity and cultural competency issues for a number of reasons. One, it’s stated in the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (DD Act) that all of the services that we provide have to be culturally competent. And so are we doing that? We really don’t have a way to tell if we are, so we’re making a concentrated and specific effort to make sure that we are. We have specific funding for programming that has gone out to the community at large. This was a diversity leadership institute to build new leaders, but also for current leaders to recognize skill sets in others where the person may be different from you and it’s not viewed as being a skill set.
MAD: Would you mind giving us some examples?
AB: There are specific cultures where you do not challenge authority. You don’t ask specific questions or do so in public, but what the typical leaders of our movement have been about is being the loud voice, being the change agent, and if that is not in your persona because culturally that is not acceptable, how do you still find leadership qualities in that individual?
They may be there, but if they’re not the same as your qualities and what you value, you may not recognize them and pass over individuals who may be able to do a tremendous job leading, but do so in their own way.
MAD: Is this becoming a bigger topic of concentration because the population is diversifying?
AB: Yes. Demographics in the United States have changed. This year, the Department of Education has data that shows for the first time in US history, we had more students of color graduating from US high schools this past June than European-Americans.
And if we look at early intervention services, more than a majority of the kids going through early intervention services are kids of color or are multiracial.
So it’s changing and how are we going to start providing services to youth and families who look completely different? We have not bridged that gap yet. Also, we don’t know how many people of color are not connected to the service delivery system and not accessing services.
MAD: DD Councils are trying to bridge that gap. But, what does bridging that gap look like? How does that progress?
AB: Every state is different, and every state looks different. We’re in Georgia and Georgia has an American Indian population, but it’s very small. It’s very different than what it looks like in New Mexico or Arizona. How it plays out is going to vary from state to state, but knowing that entities are actually trying to address specific issues is what we’re looking at doing. GCDD’s Real Communities initiative is a great example of what we are talking about today.
That initiative has built bridges with diverse communities with cultural brokering, or finding an expert or bridge builder in a specific community that you can potentially work with, provide that person or that entity with seed money to be able to go out and do specific work. What’s happening here in Georgia is one way to get it done, but it may not be appropriate for other DD Councils, but we want to talk about it as being a model.
We want DD Councils to bridge gaps and to figure out how they can start working with underrepresented groups and nontraditional populations and bring those individuals and groups into the fold, and that should be reflected in their Five Year State Plan and in their council activities.
MAD: As you said, states are all different demographically and culturally. Is there some kind of vision of what success looks like?
AB: Success is when it’s built into a Council’s normal operations so it’s no longer something separate. It’s just what they do on a daily basis. When they are going out and gathering information on what should be in the Five Year State Plan, they’re not only going to the outskirts of Atlanta or uptown to talk to the communities there that are not living in poverty, but they’re also going to the area where Martin Luther King Jr. was born and lived the later portion of his adult life. How are you gathering information from groups of people there to influence your state plan and then actually have that show up? When it’s just part of what we do on a daily basis because that is the culture of the organization, that is a success story.
What is cultural competency?
Cultural competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes and policies that come together in a system, agency or among professionals and enable that system, agency or those professions to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. Culture implies the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values and institutions of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group. Competence implies having the capacity to function effectively.
Five essential elements that contribute to a system’s, institution’s or agency’s ability to become more culturally competent include:
1. Valuing diversity
2. Having the capacity for cultural self-assessment
3. Being conscious of the dynamics inherent when cultures interact
4. Having institutionalized culture knowledge
5. Having developed adaptations to service delivery reflecting an understanding of cultural diversity
These five elements should be manifested at every level of an organization including policymaking, administrative and practice.*
* Source: The National Center for Cultural Competence, Georgetown University:nccc.georgetown.edu/
Aaron Bishop is the Commissioner of the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD). Mr. Bishop has almost 20 years of experience working with and for individuals with disabilities in both the direct practice and public policy sectors. He was the executive director of the National Council on Disability from November 2010 until February 2013. In 2006, he received a Kennedy Foundation Public Policy Fellowship to work on federal disability policy and legislation for the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
AIDD, under the Administration on Community Living, provides financial and leadership support to organizations in every state and territory in the United States to ensure that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families can fully participate in and contribute to all aspects of community life.
Read or download the complete Spring 2016 issue of Making a Difference here:
