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Disability Services
Family is not a staffing plan — ask who they want, name the unpaid work, put respite on the page.
35–45 minutes · 6 lessons · Voluntary learning
Natural supports are chosen people, not a blank that paid staff get to fill with a relative’s nights.
A silent night shift and a hallway friend are two sides of the same miss.
Empty chairs are data. Map whose unpaid work we skip counting, and whose people we never ask for.
Both frames exist. Using a relative as unpaid staff is how a circle becomes a crisis.
A repeatable method: ask who, ask what they can do, name unpaid work, fund the gap, document, review.
Take this back to one person you already serve.
Bring one live work object into the application workspace. Name who it was built for, who may carry the burden, and one change or formal escalation.
Family is not a staffing plan. At the Minnesota Department of Human Services, natural supports are the people a person already has — family, friends, neighbors, faith — and they are chosen, not assumed. If we write a mother's nights into the plan without asking her, we did not honor family. We used her. If we shut out the people the person wants in the room, we did not protect them. We isolated them. This course is a staff guide: ask who they want. Name what unpaid people actually do. Do not treat family as free labor, or as a veto. And put respite on the page before someone burns out.
If we write a mother’s nights into the plan without asking her, we did not honor family. We used her.
Use this aid while applying Family and Natural Support Systems to a live DHS work object.
Bring one live work object into the application workspace. Name who it was built for, who may carry the burden, and one change or formal escalation.
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.
Relationships with family and friends, and natural supports toward what is important to the person. Evidence, not the staff course.
Informed choice and supported decision-making when there is a guardian.
Parent and family supports; guardianship information. A partner, not the staff course.
Rights, visitors, relationships. A restriction has to be justified.
The reporting door. Harm in a family is still harm.
Consultation is a government-to-government path. Kinship may not match a metro form.