Charleston Transitional Facility

1. My volunteer work was done at Charleston Transitional Facility, also known as CTF. CTF is a non-profit organization dedicated to the assistance of individuals with developmental disabilities. The administration and staff at CTF assist their residents with daily living tasks and help them do for themselves to the best of their ability. The residents of CTF have various levels of cognitive functioning. I volunteered in a home setting where the residents had very low functioning and needed direct assistance with every daily living task.

2. Our course is called The Disadvantaged family. I closely observed the behavior and actions of the residents as well as the staff at the home, and they are a family, not by blood relations, but the manner in which they respond to one another. Some individuals have been roommates for decades. They all interact with each other no matter how high or low their cognitive functioning is. They all have their own personal issues and one that I noticed was their desire for attention. Some residents may use maladaptive behavior for a response from staff or even other residents. Many of the individuals come from backgrounds of all forms of abuse. There are also some staff members who have been there for many years and have developed a rapport with each other as staff as well as caregivers to the residents. Each and every individual is at a disadvantage in their own way. In many class sessions we've discussed the many ways in which an individual is discriminated against. It just so happens that the individuals in the home were all older women with physical and cognitive disabilities. This puts them in three categories of people who face to highest amount of discrimination; being elderly, female, and disabled.

3. I briefly spoke with the supervisor of the home and she gave me some background information on the residents, but nothing in breach of confidentiality. I told her that I was a Family and Consumer Sciences major and that my passion is to assist and uplift individuals in any way that I can. I asked her about career opportunities as well as advancements at CTF. She informed me that there is a chain of command of supervisors, case managers, administration, etc. Each position requires an amount of experience and/or education. I was told that if I was interested in the field of work that I should go to the main office building of downtown Charleston. 

4. CTF provides individuals with care who either would not survive without direct assistance, or has the potential to be very menacing to a community due to their disability. Many of the higher functioning residents have issues that can be very severe without the medication and stable environment that CTF provides. The severely disabled, whether mentally or physically, are a forgotten category of people to most of the world. The funding of programs to help these individuals is not a priority. CTF ensures that these people are not on the streets and that they receive adequate care.

 5. We all have our personal issues. We look at others lives and glorify them for having money or being famous and we wish that our lives could be just as glamorous. We see the surface and not the underlying issues they may have. Every individual has problems that are exclusive to them. This service, as well as many other people I cross paths with, makes me take the time to be thankful of my standard of living. Its not the greatest, but I could be a wheelchair bound, mentally disabled, incontinent person, with many other limitations in life. Observing these individuals was definitely a humbling experience and makes me more sensitive to the issues that concern disabled individuals.