10 minutes
Presume competence Start from the assumption that the person understands and has something to say, and see what changes when you do.
What you’ll be able to do Explain presuming competence as a practice stance and identify one situation in which a person's communication method was treated as evidence about their understanding. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What happened? Document a next step for Presume competence: Identify one person who is routinely talked about in their presence, and next time, speak to them. The first assumption decides everything Before any method, any interpreter or any device, there is an assumption. Either the person in front of you understands and has something to say, or they do not. The first assumption leads you to find the method and wait for the answer. The second leads you to talk to the person beside them. For a very long time, the second was the default in disability services, and the result was generations of people with rich inner lives who were spoken about in their presence, planned for without being asked, and recorded as having nothing to say.
Presuming competence is the decision to start from the first assumption. It is not a claim that everyone understands everything. It is a stance about where the burden lies: on the service to find the method, not on the person to prove they deserve one. The asymmetry of the errors settles it. Presume competence wrongly and you have wasted some effort. Presume incompetence wrongly and you have taken a person's voice for as long as you were in their life.
About competence, or about method? He does not speak.
Choose a category About competence About method She types slowly with one finger and needs several minutes to answer.
Choose a category About competence About method He understands what is said to him and has views about it.
Choose a category About competence About method She uses American Sign Language and English is her second language.
Choose a category About competence About method He communicates yes and no by looking up or down.
Choose a category About competence About method She can weigh two options and choose between them.
Choose a category About competence About method Check matches Reset Not speaking is a fact about method. It is not evidence about understanding, and treating it as evidence is the most common error in this work.
Ask about method before anything else What you can change You control the first question of any meeting. Asking how the person communicates and how long it takes, before any content, is what makes the rest of the meeting theirs.
What to watch for Do not let a meeting proceed with the person in the room and no established method. Every decision made that way is one they were excluded from.
Your next step Make the method question the first item on every meeting agenda you set.
Carry this forward Presuming competence means assuming the person understands, has opinions, and can communicate them given the right method and enough time, until there is real evidence otherwise.
The alternative — assuming the person does not understand because they do not speak — is the most common error in disability services and produces decades of people being talked about in their presence.
The cost of presuming competence wrongly is some wasted effort; the cost of presuming incompetence wrongly is a person's whole life.
A sort separating competence from method, a statement, a scenario decision and a knowledge check.
Identify one person who is routinely talked about in their presence, and next time, speak to them.
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Course overview Next lesson Carry this into practice Presuming competence, the methods people use to communicate when speech is not available or not enough, what it takes to work with an interpreter or a communication device well, and how to make what you say and write usable.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
