10 minutes
What the form and the service plan assume Two opposite failures produce the same result: never asking, so a practice that organizes someone's week never reaches the plan, and asking with no purpose, so a person explains their belief to an agency that will do nothing with it.
What you’ll be able to do Tell erasure and intrusion apart in a form, script, communication plan or service plan, and write a participation question that replaces both, with a stated purpose, use and record rule. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should the revised form do? Document a next step for What the form and the service plan assume: Take one form, script, template or plan you work with, find the question that asks about identity but changes nothing, and rewrite it as a participation question with a stated purpose, a stated use and one plain line about who will see the answer. Erasure and intrusion are the same failure wearing different clothes Public systems tend to swing between two errors. The first is erasure: the subject never comes up, so a weekly obligation, a dietary practice, a mourning period or a spiritual community that is the person's main source of support never reaches the plan. Nobody made a decision to leave it out. The form had no place for it and the conversation had no time for it, and a person's week was organized around something the plan could not see.
The second is intrusion: a field labeled with a category, asked of everyone, used by nothing, and stored somewhere a person cannot see. Asking a Minnesotan to write their religion on a state form in order to receive a service carries real weight — more for people whose communities have been surveilled, questioned at borders or asked to account for themselves in public. The answer is not made safer by the fact that the field is optional or that the intentions behind it were good.
The way between them is to change the subject of the question from belief to participation. A plan does not need to know what a person believes. It needs to know what regularly happens in their week, what they want to keep doing, and what would have to change for that to be possible. That question is answerable by a person with a deep religious practice, by a person whose spirituality has no congregation attached, and by a person with no religion at all whose Thursday evening is nonetheless spoken for. And it produces something a plan can carry out, which is the only reason to ask a question in the first place.
The same subject, four ways Erasure Intrusion A useful question What travels with the answer
Nothing on the form, nothing in the conversation, nothing in the plan. A person stops attending a weekly gathering that was the main thing holding her week together, and the record shows only that transportation was arranged for medical appointments. No one decided this. That is what makes it hard to find.
“Religious preference: ______,” asked of everyone, used by nothing, shared with several parties. The person cannot tell what the answer will do, cannot see where it goes, and has no way to decline without wondering whether declining is itself noted.
“Are there regular practices, observances, gatherings or dietary needs that matter to you, and what would it take for this plan to support them?” Answerable by anyone, including people with no religion. Produces specific, actionable items: a ride at a fixed time, a meal prepared a particular way, a day left clear.
Only what the plan will act on: the ride, the meal, the clear day, the name of a place. Not the belief behind it. Say on the form who sees the record and why, and keep the reason a person gave out of it unless they asked for it to be written down.
Erasure, intrusion, or a useful question? A residential service plan lists meal preferences by likes and dislikes only, with no field for a dietary practice.
Choose a category Erasure Intrusion A useful question A registration form asks every attendee to state their religion, and nothing in the event plan uses the answer.
Choose a category Erasure Intrusion A useful question A planning conversation asks which regular commitments a person wants the schedule to protect, and the answer changes the transport arrangement.
Choose a category Erasure Intrusion A useful question An intake script asks a person to explain why they observe a dietary practice before a request is passed to the kitchen.
Choose a category Erasure Intrusion A useful question An engagement plan lists faith and cultural organizations only as places to leave flyers, with no line for their questions or their fee.
Choose a category Erasure Intrusion A useful question A survey asks what would make it easier for you to attend, with a named contact and a reply date, and the answers change the next schedule.
Choose a category Erasure Intrusion A useful question Check matches Reset Assumptions worth checking in a program design That natural supports means family. For many people the steadiest support is a congregation, a cultural organization or a neighbor from one, and none of them appear in the plan.
That community means secular community. A community partner list built only from providers and advocacy organizations misses where people actually get information and help.
That a week holds no fixed obligations. Appointment scheduling, day-program hours, transport windows and staff rotas are all built as though every hour is equally available.
That a person living in a congregate setting has no practice to keep. Getting to a weekly service, keeping a dietary practice or having a private half hour depends entirely on whether someone wrote it into the plan.
That an adult with a disability has no spiritual life of their own to be consulted about — one of the oldest and most persistent assumptions in this field, and one that substitute decision-making can quietly entrench.
That a congregation will help for free. Organizations that carry information, transport and trust into communities are partners with costs, and should be paid the way any other partner is paid.
State the purpose, the use and the record rule What you can change You control whether a question survives into the next version of a form, and whether anyone can explain what it is for.
What to watch for Do not keep a field because it has always been there, and do not delete a need because the field that was standing in for it was badly written. Those are two different decisions.
Your next step Take the next form or script you revise, and for every identity question write three sentences: why it is asked, what changes because of the answer, and who sees it. Cut anything that fails one of the three.
Private reflection, for you only: in a form, script or plan you work with, does what you ask make sense to someone who does not already know how DHS works — and would they understand what happens to the answer? Nothing you write here is collected, stored or seen by anyone.
Carry this forward Erasure is never asking, so a weekly obligation, a dietary practice or a mourning period never reaches a plan that could have supported it. Intrusion is asking with no purpose, no use and no record rule, so a person explains a belief to a government agency that will do nothing with it and may share it widely.
Between them sits the useful question, and it is about participation rather than belief: what regular practices, observances or needs matter to you here, and what would it take for this plan to support them?
Any question you keep needs three sentences behind it: why it is asked, what will change because of the answer, and who will see it. A question that fails any of the three should be cut, not reworded.
Program design carries quiet assumptions worth checking: that natural supports means family, that community means secular community, that a week holds no fixed obligations, that a person in a congregate setting has no way to keep a practice, and that a disabled adult has no spiritual life of their own to be consulted about.
A scenario about revising an assessment question, sorting practice separating erasure from intrusion from a useful question, and a knowledge check on purpose, use and record rule.
Take one form, script, template or plan you work with, find the question that asks about identity but changes nothing, and rewrite it as a participation question with a stated purpose, a stated use and one plain line about who will see the answer.
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