February 22, 2024
In the disability industry, it is important to cultivate expectations of people that reflect their potential for growth and development. This is because expectations shape the future reality you move towards.
The expectations you develop early in any given relationship will play into the shaping of its interactions into the future, and ultimately informs the outcomes of the relationship, whether positive or negative. If expectations aren’t formed around reaching for potential, they can be damaging, either pessimistically or unrealistically.
When dealing in expectations shaped around potential, it is the working towards a future state that is better than the current one, rather than the alternative of acting with overreliance or hyperfocus on the past and/or present challenges. Someone’s potential is always more than what is currently demonstrated.
This is because of the fundamental reality that we live in a world that is always moving, growing and progressing. This means necessarily that the people within that world must be doing the same. As time progresses, so do our ideas and the environment, which in turn means as humans we will continuously grow and improve, at both an individual and global level.
Over-optimistic expectations however, can blind and paralyse people with visions of grandeur that are not realistic to the real constraints of the person’s experience. In the working towards the future state, simple expectations of progress rather than perfection are what cultivate a better reality for the person with disability and their community.
It can be argued that we operate in an industry where pessimism undergirds practice and partnerships. The increasing volume of policies, procedures, and the socialisation and publicised accessibility of complaints and feedback processes, while important for regulation, safety and quality control, can all indicate an implicit mistrust of other people, and expectations that the past and present challenges are what inform reality.
This is not to discredit the place of a healthy caution and basic discernment when it comes to trusting people. We cannot run on the assumptive that nothing will ever go wrong, in fact, we should assume that there will be significant challenges. However, this should be infused with the hope that things will also always improve, and that expectations of greater potential will help to work towards that better future state.
If expectations of improvement were instilled into the everyday mechanics of support work, for example, participants would be constantly encouraged and treated as though they can do something more than the day before, as meaningful within their own context. Whether it be making a choice to engage in something new, responding slightly less alarmedly at sensory changes, or taking one more independent step out of the house, the small wins should be expected by those around them, recognised, and celebrated as the future state is realised. Without this expectation, support workers may continue to do the same things, and not provide room for participants to try things outside of the comfort zone, or the bounds of what has been done before. They will impose a focus on past challenges and inhibit the potential progress.
The implications for social attitudes towards people with disability would have a radically different impact. Rather than thoughts towards disabled people being centralised on what their limitations and past challenges have been, attitudes would focus on what they could possibly achieve in the future. This would call the rest of society to action with the question of how to help get to that potential future together.
Therefore expectations should always be built to move towards to the maximum potential conceivable, keeping realistic variables present, and motivating the other person to work towards a better future state together.
We must create a world where there is implicit trust and belief that we are working together to create a better future state. Without this, fragments in the system become deep tears, organisations work in competition or opposition to one another, people with disabilities are caught in the crossfire of competing opinions and expectations, and progress is limited.
Providing registered NDIS disability services and building communities throughout Brisbane.
