This film and guide are about the Healthy Opportunities for Meaningful Experience Society (HOMES) in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada. Over ten years ago, the HOMES Society decided to work with the most marginalized youth and adults in BC, using the model and principles of Gentle Teaching. The goal was to administer a “culture of gentleness” based on unconditional love.

In May 2006, ten individuals from HOMES agreed to be interviewed about how their lives have changed after being part of the HOMES community. The result of those interviews is a film of their experiences, I’ve Been Down That Road. This booklet is a guide to accompany the film, as well as specific information on how HOMES uses Gentle Teaching with the people in their care.

This film and guide are intended for caregivers, educators, and administrators who deal with marginalized people everywhere. The first section of this guide offers an introduction to Gentle Teaching and a description of people in the HOMES community. Section Two of the guide contains more background information about the lives of the ten people in the film, including the Gentle Teaching approach to dealing with different disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and borderline personality disorder. Section Three gives more in-depth information about the philosophy and concepts of Gentle Teaching. Section Four offers practical tools for caregivers, and Section Five addresses practical considerations for implementing the HOMES model in communities around the world.

Section One: An Introduction To Homes And Gentle Teaching

This film and guide are about ten young people who have survived tragic life circumstances. The “system” had long ago given up on them, and their last hope was to enter the HOMES community, a service supporting over 50 individuals with special needs in a range of small group homes and family homes in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada.

HOMES was formed over ten years ago to respond to the needs of a small group of individuals who had not succeeded in many previous attempts to leave institutional life. It grew out of a coalition of leaders from existing agencies, family members, and staff from former institutions. From the start, government worked closely with HOMES in its developmental stages. Almost all necessary support services were consolidated within HOMES to enable flexibility and quick responses to personal needs.

Who Does Homes Serve?

HOMES serves the most marginalized—those who have been through jails, prisons, forensic hospitals, psychiatric hospitals and clinics, foster homes, group homes, and raw homelessness.

These men and women come from the other side of life—lives made up of broken homes, sexual molestation, rape, litanies of loss and death, addiction to booze, cocaine, heroin, prostitution, homelessness, hunger, self-mutilation, and attempts at suicide. Nothing had changed them. The closest that they came to living in the community was living on the streets, begging for food, and searching for cigarette butts.

They had been diagnosed with labels such as borderline personality, attachment disorder, schizophrenia, depression, fetal alcohol syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, and intellectual disabilities. They had been drugged and subjected to behavioural management.

(Put this somewhere else?) All around the world individuals with these needs challenge society to find forgiving and loving ways to help them. Yet the help has focused on behavioural interventions, government data on outcomes, and stringent group homes and traditional institutional settings.

Gentle Teaching

The HOMES Society has embraced the Gentle Teaching method since inception and has asked its caregivers to take a different approach to dealing with people. The HOMES community has put aside traditional practices such as physical management, restraint, and consequences. It does not accept interventions based on the use of reward and punishment, designed to modify personally and socially destructive behaviours.

The first duty of Gentle Teaching is to assure each person protection from any harm, mainly through a sharp eye on prevention, constant nurturing, and loving caregiver interactions. This method most often prevents violence by giving individuals what they want, so caregivers have the chance to enter their space and give them what they need. Individuals learn to feel safe and loved, to see their caregivers as authentic companions, and to slowly learn to trust others in the broader community.

Although traditional approaches and practices based on control and compliance might work for a time as a last resort, HOMES asks its caregivers to see themselves as companions to marginalized persons. “What works” is not necessarily what is best for the person and his/her caregivers. For example, in the past, scientists have said that cold baths, lobotomies, the denial of food and drink, and cattle prods work with marginalized persons.

HOMES focuses on two central purposes: first, giving each person a sense of feeling safe and loved with their caregivers as companions, and second, helping individuals to express love to others, both in the HOMES community and in the greater community. HOMES emphasizes educating and mentoring its caregivers and celebrating and sharing each person’s skills and gifts.

As part of a culture of gentleness, HOMES has developed a flexible, person-centred approach and a-quick-to-respond management model that recognizes the depth of each person’s past experiences and the wounds and scars that these have left on the hearts and souls of those whom it serves.

In its approach to Gentle Teaching, HOMES defines care-giving as:

the development of new memories
feeling safe within oneself and with others
feeling loved, respected, and even noble
feeling accepted as a person
being an active participant in one’s own life project
feeling the power and strength to help others and live in community

This is a dynamic and personalized process, which happens in the heart, not the mind. It does not involve “teaching the person a lesson,” but helping them define deep in their hearts what life is all about, so that a sense of genuine companionship and community becomes as natural as breathing air.

HOMES expects that its caregivers’ central task is to give repeated acts of unconditional love. These slowly lead to the development of new memories and feelings of companionship and community. It involves, eventually, a sense of engagement—doing things together, doing things for others, and the rare ability to give unconditionally to others.

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