My uncle Denis, an adult with developmental disabilities, lives at Plowshare Farm. Last June, I spent an extended period at Plowshare and had opportunity to experience daily life.<\/p>\n
Plowshare is built on a concept called \u201cLife-sharing,\u201d where people with and without developmental disabilities live together in extended family households. In many of these households, whole families including young children share their homes with people with special needs. The co-workers and care givers are not \u201cshift workers.\u201d They live in the community, many of them are there on a volunteer basis.<\/p>\n
Community members of all abilities work side by side on the farm \u2013 also in Plowshare\u2019s bakery, candle making shop, a ceramics studio and other areas of work. They are even blacksmiths! Several community members who are capable of it, work outside the farm.<\/p>\n
I worked with my uncle Denis milking cows and picking vegetables on the farm, and accompanied him as he worked with a local logger, doing jobs in the surrounding area, interacting with people in the wider community. Denis spends as much as 30 hours a week working outside of Plowshare.<\/p>\n
My Uncle Denis is difficult to describe. His challenges include autism, and a range of developmental, intellectual, perceptual and neurological disabilities. He also has intractable epilepsy. He\u2019s quite verbal and able to engage enthusiastically in conversations \u2013 especially about sports and rock music, which are his passions. He can probably name every back-up quarterback in the NFL as well as every member of Bon Jovi\u2019s band. At the same time, if he dropped something but didn\u2019t see where it landed, and you told him, \u201cDenis, it\u2019s behind you,\u201d he wouldn\u2019t know what \u201cbehind you\u201d means. Additionally, he has difficulty focusing, maintaining attention and handling simple physical tasks like regulating the water for a shower. He can\u2019t cross a street by himself. He is also prone to severe behavioral outbursts.<\/p>\n
Obviously, Denis would have really hard time finding a place to be in this world without Plowshare. As a matter of fact, because of my uncles complicated array of challenges, many living situations failed to meet his needs in the past. But at Plowshare he has an amazingly rich, full social and work life. He lives with dignity and purpose. And he loves being there!<\/p>\n
The same can be said for many of the other individuals I observed or encountered, some with greater physical and intellectual challenges than my uncle.<\/p>\n
Additionally, there are a several people who live there with minimal disabilities. You might wonder why they are at Plowshare. But they live there because they choose to \u2013 finding it far more supportive and inclusive than living in more conventional or should I say less life-affirming communities. Their social life is much more active and rewarding.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no pressure to compete, no having to measure up, no having to endure being ostracized because they are different. As it\u2019s been described to me, their attempts to live and work in more conventional settings have been anything but inclusive. At Plowshare they flourish.<\/p>\n
And Plowshare is by no means isolated from the rest of the world. There is a lively ongoing relationship between Plowshare and their immediate neighbors as well as the surrounding towns. They recently opened a store\/coffee shop in the town of Wilton, NH, where many community members work and socialize with the locals.<\/p>\n
Whether they are working on the farm, working at a job in the surrounding area or helping in Plowshare\u2019s store in town, everyone at Plowshare enjoys a variety of work opportunities, along with safety and security of living in a magnificent setting. Adding to the beauty of the place, Plowshare is a model of environmental sustainability. Overall, the level of good they do in the world is remarkable.<\/p>\n
While some of Plowshare\u2019s community members can articulate why they choose to live there, many residents don\u2019t have that ability \u2013 their developmental and intellectual challenges are too severe for them to express themselves verbally. We can only recognize the choices they make, by the way they behave and react. And when you see the way these individuals live every day, how happy and productive they are, how well integrated into the surrounding community they are, it\u2019s clear they\u2019ve made a great choice.<\/p>\n
The families of these people \u2013 often very involved in their lives \u2013 are unbelievably grateful to have this amazing option. I know that my grandparents and parents believe that Plowshare has literally saved my uncle\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Lumping places like Plowshare together with institutions is a seriously unfortunate generalization. But Medicaid regulations and guidelines do just that, and they take freedom of choice away from people with developmental disabilities. They must be changed!<\/p>\n
So, please click on the link below and sign the petition on my Causes page. Share it with your classmates, friends and families, asking them sign or to comment or like what we are saying and doing. I will make sure that Brian Neale, director of Medicaid Services hears our message loud and clear: THE SETTINGS RULE MUST BE AMENDED TO PRESERVE CHOICE!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My uncle Denis, an adult with developmental disabilities, lives at Plowshare Farm. Last June, I spent an extended period at Plowshare and had opportunity to experience daily life. Plowshare is built on a concept called \u201cLife-sharing,\u201d where people with and without developmental disabilities live together in extended family households. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncpagroup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}