7 minutes
Practice this week Take this back to one person you already serve.
What you’ll be able to do Identify the practical implication of “Practice this week” and apply it to one live DHS decision connected to Neurodiversity and Cognitive Difference. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should happen before the work is locked? Document a next step for Practice this week: Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed. The course ends when one compliance goal that outlived the person gets a date — or comes off.
From evidence to Tuesday You now have a definition of both duties, a pattern for how we treat difference as deficit, a chair test, two frames, and a six-move loop. This lesson turns that into one person you already serve — not a special “neurodiversity project.”
Pick someone you would usually keep out of group or keep without a device: high support, a frozen social-skills goal, a stim-as-aggression file, a language you have not used. Small and complete beats a strategy deck with no name.
In this lesson you will Choose one person and run the chair test.
Practice a repair that does not blame them for our room.
Set a seven-day practice transfer.
Know the job aid and the formal doors you must not skip.
If we measure success by eye contact, stillness, and looking ready, we did not support a person. We made them perform our comfort.
Lesson 1, to take with you Three approaches, used together Fix the next meeting Apply the job aid to one person. Ask, match communication, change the room, teach what they want, document, review. Small and complete.
Fix one template The unit’s planning agenda or social-skills log. If the template asks for their words, the room, a skill they want, and a date, every future meeting inherits the method.
Fix the culture tell If people who stim are called disruptive, interrupt it. If a still group is praised as good care, stop praising it. Culture is what gets applause.
Return to the room. The question is whether the people we serve get this kind of hour before we congratulate ourselves for a quiet group.
Repair without theater You will have left compliance goals on too long. Repair is: name the miss, offer the communication now in a format they can use, change the room, put a date on what remains, change the agenda so their words come first from now on, and skip the speech that makes them manage your embarrassment. “We should have brought the device months ago. I am bringing it now. Here is the quieter offer. You can say stop. We will write it down and come back on a date we name.”
Constraints you will hit Time Orders and licensing Partners Urgency theater
Caseloads and thin shifts are real. Many “no time for a quieter offer” notes are late starts. When time is short, shorten the loop; do not delete the device.
EIDBI, medical orders, 245D, and maltreatment law are real. They shape how you teach. They do not cancel a review date or a supported try while you wait on a door.
Providers, clinics, counties, and Tribal programs have their own calendars. DHS still sets the tone for the balance in meetings we host. Do not lower the bar because a partner is used to the still group.
If every stim is an emergency hold, you are choosing calm over the person. Write the room in one sentence. Change it. Then teach only what still needs it — with a date.
Seven-day transfer Do these four things in the next seven calendar days. They are small enough to finish and large enough to count as Neurodiversity and Cognitive Difference.
Your seven-day list Pick one person you would usually keep out of group or keep without a device. Write a half-page: how they communicate, what they call themselves, what compliance goal sits in the file.
Ask in a format they can use — device, extra time, quieter room — or schedule that access now.
Date one compliance goal. If you cannot defend the date, drop it or replace it with a skill they asked for.
Tell your team that a still group is not the applause line — then follow it when the first quieter offer is inconvenient.
Principles to keep when the week gets loud The person is not the problem The undated eye-contact goal, the skipped device, or the fluorescent room is. The person who said stop, or who never heard the question, gave you information.
The support has to be real Do not call it choice if the device was never in the bag. Brief with dignity instead of a checkbox.
Formal doors are not optional Maltreatment, 245D restrictions, EIDBI, medical orders, and Tribal paths are not “extra comms.” Use the right door.
Review the compliance goal or you taught them not to want the life What they want. What the room did. What we will try. When we look again. That note is the product.
The noisy room can stay as a real place to practice with support. It cannot be the first option we never change.
The feedback loop Intention → who was offered a usable conversation → who had their words → what room we named → what we changed → what compliance goal remains, dated → revision. If you never ask who was offered a usable conversation, you will congratulate yourselves for groups that only worked for people already easy to keep still.
Sort these practice moves Date one compliance goal or replace it with a skill they asked for.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Report suspected maltreatment instead of handling it as a house issue.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Ban headphones because a meeting ran long.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Bring the communication device to the next meeting.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Write a stim as aggression without naming the room.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Check matches Reset “Noncompliant” is often “the room was wrong, and we wrote it on the person.”
Lesson 2, to take with you What to do next Open the Environment-First Job Aid and keep it beside your next planning meeting. This course is original One DHS instructional content for staff practice. For maltreatment, licensing restrictions, EIDBI, medical orders, and Tribal consultation, use those formal doors. This is not a substitute for them.
You have finished the six lessons when you complete the checks and open the job aid. The work is the next compliance goal you date — or take off.
Put this lesson to work What you can change You control whether practice this week changes a live DHS process connected to Neurodiversity and Cognitive Difference or remains information on a page.
What to watch for The team completes the learning, keeps the same default, assigns no owner, and never checks who carries the burden.
Your next step Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Carry this forward Take this back to one person you already serve.
You control whether practice this week changes a live DHS process connected to Neurodiversity and Cognitive Difference or remains information on a page.
Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Completion is shown by a scenario decision, a knowledge-check response, a completed sort and a saved one-minute commitment.
Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
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Reset this lesson
Previous lesson Back to course Carry this into practice Examine environmental barriers and support people with different cognitive styles without treating difference as a defect.
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.
