Group Home Residents The purpose of this paper is to ex

The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature related to the concept of natural support as it applies to group home residents, emphasizing the use of the concept for meeting residents' leisure and recreational needs. To this end, the paper begins with an explication of the natural supports paradigm.

The explication is followed by a brief examination of the characteristics and features of the group home setting. The final section of the paper explores application of the natural support model to meeting the leisure and recreational needs of disabled group home residents.

According to Smull (1989), health care for disabled people living in group home settings is currently undergoing a paradigm shift. Specifically, the field is moving away from the medical model with its reliance on special services delivered by highly paid and credentialed professions in a fairly segregated service setting toward a system that (while maintaining responsiveness to individual needs) uses community resources to supply a wide array of supportive services.

This new paradigm has been referred to by Nisbet (1992) as the concept of "natural supports" which:

...is based on the understanding that relying on typical people and environments enhances the potential for inclusion more effectively than relying on specialized services and personnel. (p. 5)

In other words, inclusion of the disabled is a pivotal feature of the natural supports conce

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Category: Medical - G