Social Role Valorization 2011

Summary of the Introduction to Role Valorization Workshop April 11-14, 2011

By: Jen Banathy

On April 11-14th, I had the pleasure of attending the Social Role Valorization (SRV) workshop organized by the Georgia Advocacy Office and presented by Darcy Elks and additional faculty. The workshop was attended by about fifty people, including people with physical and mental disabilities, family members of people with disabilities, people who work in human services, and advocates. This was my second year in attendance and I was again reminded how useful this information is in helping myself and others clarify what actually tends to happen to people in our society who are given a label that others as a whole don’t positively value. As a person who was diagnosed with a mental illness, I experienced the devastation that resulted from being labeled as mentally ill, including such things as complete dependency on other people and the mental health system, institutionalization, segregation, and disenfranchisement. Fortunately today I embrace my recovery and I live a full and meaningful life, including significant personal relationships, a challenging and rewarding job, recreation and leisure, and spiritual growth.

As a Certified Peer Specialist, one of my priorities is supporting others who are recovering from mental illness. I’ve found that the combination of my experiences living with a mental illness combined with the knowledge I gain by attending workshops such as the Introduction to Social Role Valorization add to my own personal growth and enhance my abilities to assist my peers. I strongly encourage others to attend this workshop so that they, too, can reflect on the reality of life for people who are devalued, and in doing so raise their level of consciousness and the consciousness of others. This workshop also presents well documented strategies for lessening the negative effects of devaluation.

Social Role Valorization (SRV) is the name given to a concept for transacting human relationships and human service, formulated in 1983 by Wolf Wolfensberger, Ph.D. SRV is defined as the enablement, establishment, enhancement, maintenance, and/or defense of valued social roles for people-particularly those at value-risk-by using, as much as possible, culturally valued means. In other words, SRV is a means to enhance a person’s or group’s competencies and image so that they enter social roles that are positively valued in the eyes of the perceivers. In both French and English, the term valorization has its root in the Latin word valere, which means to value or accord worth.

Devaluation can be defined as the attribution of low, or even no, value to a person or group. It is a process of negative social judgment of one person or group to another on the basis of some characteristic (that is usually a difference) and occurs on both the individual and societal level. Devaluation is universal-even the devalued will devalue others-and it is unconscious. A person who is devalued experiences life defining wounds when his identity is reduced to a label, such as “amputee,” “cripple,” “neurotic,” or “addict.” By using such labels, a person is reduced to a deficit. Life becomes extremely small and limited as a person’s life is defined by his deficit and its limitations. There are multiple impacts of devaluation, including relegation to a low or “deviant” status, rejection by others, symbolic stigmatizing or “deviancy-imaging,” distantiation, usually via segregation and also congregation, and loss of control, perhaps even autonomy and freedom, to name only a few. Roughly one-third of our population is in a devalued status.

When we are discussing SRV It is important for us to consider what our society today places high value on. Wealth, health and beauty of body, youth, competence, productivity, and adult individualism and unrestrained choice are among the highest valued attributes. Over the long run, most people or groups who are devalued experience a quality of life that is much below that of those who are not devalued and are excluded from obtaining or even experiencing any of the above attributes.

There are typical response patterns that are engendered by the wounds a devalued person experiences. For example, a person may become preoccupied with his own condition. He may also feel, be or act like an alien in the world. One may experience sorrow over all the good things he missed and the bad things he has suffered. It is also likely for a wounded person to experience a sense of worthlessness as well as a dislike of self and despair, which might lead to insecurity and failure sets and avoidance mentalities. Additionally, a wounded person may test the genuineness of personal and social relationships, withdraw from human contact and perhaps even from reality and turn the hurt into resentment and hatred. All of the above involves a sapping of energy, both physically and mentally.

There are two thrusts of SRV. First is to change perceptions of the perceiver so that positive social judgments will be made. Second is to assist people with a devalued status to have a full and meaningful life, or “the good life.” A social role is defined as a socially expected pattern of behaviors, responsibilities, expectations, and privileges. Valued social roles are important for a number of reasons, including giving a person “a place” in society, increasing the likelihood that the “good things of life” will come to a person, compensating for and even overcoming stigma, and providing restoration and healing. Some of what constitutes the “good things in life” include good health, a home, friends, family and loved ones, acceptance and welcoming, freedom of movement, opportunities to discover and develop talents, and fair and just treatment.

Three concepts are important when discussing SRV, including Culturally Valued Analogue (CVA), Culture-Appropriateness and Age-Appropriateness. One way of understanding Culturally Valued Analog is asking ourselves the question, “What happens for people who have a societally valued status?” In addition to considering what happens for people in more highly valued roles, it is important for us to consider a person’s culture and age in relevance to his social roles.

There are major recurring themes in the multitude of implications of SRV. First is the theme of Unconsciousness, which involves understanding why so much devaluation is unconscious and fuels so much unconscious expression. We experience a systemic unconsciousness in our society and those who are devalued pay a high price for our unconsciousness. It is crucial that we place ourselves and others in positions of being powerful consciousness raising agents of change.

Next is offering positive compensation for disadvantage, or the theme of “Conservatism Corollary.” Devalued people and their families exist in a state of heightened vulnerability and many experience long-standing wounding and degradation. The Conservatism Corollary states that the more vulnerable a person/family is the greater is the need for the positive impact of preventing additional wounds, reducing existing devaluation and providing positive compensation to balance off the vulnerability or devaluation. This is a conscious, intentional strategy for addressing heightened vulnerability.

Another theme highlights the importance of Interpersonal Identification. It states that people who identify with others will generally want good things for the others, want to be with the others, communicate good things about the others, want to please the others, and possibly want to be like the others. There are strategies for fostering interpersonal identification, including improving the approachability of each party by the other, finding and emphasizing commonalities shared by the parties, engaging each party in experiences that will help them see the world through one another’s eyes, and fostering each party’s sense of responsibility for one another.

The Power of Mindsets and Expectancies is an additional SRV theme. A mindset is the frame of mind or belief that things are one way or another. Mindsets enable us to perceive things we might not otherwise see and can prevent us from seeing things we might otherwise see. Expectancies are what we believe will likely happen in any given situation. Some relevant mindsets for us to consider are the nature of human nature, how people perceive and value each other, what the “good life” consists of and what people should do to attain the “good life,” what people need and how needs should be addressed, and what good supports consist of and how those supports should be rendered.

A further theme is the Power of Role Expectancies and Role Circularity. There are four requirements regarding the use of the dynamic of role expectancy and role circularity. We must assist people at risk of devaluation to avoid becoming entrapped in negative role circularities, or feedback loops, embed persons at risk into positive role circularities, assist people who are entrapped in negative role feedback loops to break out of these loops, and assist such people to enter positive role circularities. Using the concept of valued social roles, it is important to choose and support roles that confirm a person’s identity, talents and gifts and to think in terms of as many valued roles as possible, even if the person being supported only has the ability to partially fill the roles.

Imagery is an additional SRV theme. When we think of various images associated with a person, those images convey messages about a person’s social status, social roles, age identity, similarity to others and place in society, competence, and miscellaneous personal attributes or characteristics. There is a subculture of deviancy experienced by people who are devalued that is partly conveyed through the images attached to them, including their appearance, autonomy and rights, personal names and labels, types of activities and services, and even symbols and logos. There are numerous consequences of deviancy-imaging, including confirming the devalued status of victim(s) in their own eyes and those of society, legitimizing distantiation and segregation and freezing devalued people into negatively valued and competency-diminishing roles. Therefore, we must think about what we are conveying to a devalued person and society at large through the personal images, language and activities that we include in the supports and services we provide.

One more theme is Model Coherency, which poses the question, “Does the model make sense?” There are main questions to consider in any human services model, including identifying who the people are that are receiving services, what their needs consist of and how those needs should be delivered and how all of the above should be talked about. When considering services, it is necessary to think about both the relevance or precise matching of service content to the recipient’s needs, and potency, or utilizing the most effective processes. In implementation of services, we must be mindful that program components fit together harmoniously and that no avoidable harm is inflicted on a person by the contents and processes of the services we offer.
There are broad areas of personal competency that a person experiences over a lifetime, including the capacity to protect and maintain bodily integrity and health, self-help skills, the capacity to project a positive personal appearance, communication, intellectual ability, skills, habits, and disciplines, motivation, initiative, and drive, competent and responsible exercise of personal autonomy and control, social and relationship competency, and unfolding and expression of self. Personal competency enhancement of devalued people is important for many reasons, which brings me to the next SRV theme, Personal Competency Enhancement in a Developmental Model. Personal competency is highly culturally valued and the more competent an individual is the more accepting society will be of any negatively valued differences he may have. Points to consider in competency enhancement are life as change (life is constantly changing), sequence of development (stages of development) and flexibility of development (development varies according to the individual).

The next theme is the Power of Imitation. There are many ways to use imitation for achieving Social Role Valorization in human services and elsewhere. It is important to understand the power of imitation and be mindful of the contributions and inspiration received from great models. We need to surround others, especially vulnerable persons, with good models and as much as possible, protect devalued or vulnerable persons from exposure to bad models. Lastly, we must be positive role models ourselves not only to the people we serve, but to fellow service workers, advocates, families, and the public.

Personal Social Integration and Valued Social and Societal Participation is the final SRV theme. Personal social integration and valued social participation consists of adaptive participation by a (devalued) person in a culturally normative quantity of contacts, interactions, and positive relationships with normal citizens. The participation is in normative shared activities that are part of recognizable roles, and are carried out in valued (or at least ordinary) physical and social settings. In other words, we ask ourselves the question, “How can we expect a difference when we are kept apart?” Inclusion and integration of vulnerable and devalued people into normal activities and settings experienced by valued people in society is vital in overcoming devaluation. There are numerous rationales in support of social integration of devalued persons, including the benefits to the integrated (devalued) person, the benefits to other interested parties (families and friends, for example) and the benefits to society. Settings, groupings and images (messages) can be either facilitators or barriers to social integration, so it is necessary to consider if the above help or hinder integration by inviting acceptance or rejection by other people.

To conclude, there are six distinct potential goals of SRV. The first goal is the valorization of the positive roles already held by a person. Second is averting a person’s entry into (additional) devalued roles. Third is assisting a person’s entry into new valued roles or to regain previously valued roles. Fourth is helping a person to escape devalued roles. Fifth is reducing the negative roles already held by the person. Sixth is exchanging devalued roles already held by the person for less devalued new roles.

SRV is a social science concept and rests on a solid foundation of well-established social science theory, research and empiricism within fields such as sociology and psychology. SRV is not a value system or ideology, nor does it prescribe or dictate value decisions. What people do in their relationships and services, or in response to the people they serve, demands greatly on their values, assumptions, and beliefs. However, SRV makes a compelling argument of how positive personal and cultural values can be powerfully brought to bear if one wishes to pursue valued social roles for people. Now that I have a basic understanding of SRV, I am able to utilize the concepts and principles of SRV to better understand my experiences as a person living with a mental illness and augment the work I do as a Certified Peer Specialist. I am hoping that others will learn about SRV and discover its significance in our lives. In the words of Johnetta B. Cole, “We are for difference: for respecting difference, for allowing difference, for encouraging difference, until difference no longer makes a difference.”

(My gratitude and appreciation to Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger, Darcy T. Elks and faculty for the use of their material in my summary.)