Our guest speaker on Friday, October 27th was Lance Morehouse, CEO of Sherwood Community Services and a member of our club talking about a Social Model of Disabilities.
Lance showed a number of slides, the first outlining the mission statement of Sherwood Community Services which is "Sherwood provides innovative, inclusive services for children and adults with disabilities in their communities".
Sherwood Community Services was established in 1957. In 2022, the Herald's Best of Snohomish County, Sherwood was voted Best Employment Agency in Snohomish County!
The Raising Hands is an annual event hosted by the Tulalip Tribes Tulalip Cares to honor recipient charities in different community impact categories. In 2022, Sherwood Community Services was showcased in a video at the Raising Hands event. In the video, Lance talks about Sherwood, with an introduction to Early Intervention by Anna Gibson about the work they do and Carolyn Bly , Circulation and Delivery Services Manager at Sno-Isles Libraries about Nicky who is part of the library system and discussing her abilities at work.
Some of the other topics Lance mentioned were Neurodiversity which is a concept used to break the social stigma that affects the perception of disability and focuses on the diversity and strengths of all individuals. Another topic was the Medical Model of Disability and the Social Model of Disability and the social barriers. A video showing "how to treat an individual with a disability" was shown Like A Person, Like A Person, Like A Person. The last video outlined the historic information which has been developed in England very early on about individuals with disabilities and how to treat them and so much more.