Main Points

How to Support

Remind the people who you support about the power statement and say it with them. Talk about what it means to respect someone and what it means to feel safe.

A relationship is how two people talk and behave when they are around each other.

Remind the people who you support that they have a relationship with everyone in their life (e.g. family, co-workers, partners, etc.)

Trust is when you know someone cares about you and will try to keep you safe. Trust is built over time.

If the people who you support do not know if they can trust someone, ask them the following:

• Can you be yourself around this person and say things you might not share with others?
• Does this person care about you?
• Would this person hurt you on purpose?
• Would this person help you if you needed it?
• Have you known this person for a long time?

All feelings are important and help you figure out how much you can trust the different people in your life.

Remind the people who you support that:

• whatever they are feeling is okay, even if it is a good or not-so-good feeling;
• it is okay to feel different than other people around you; and
• you may not know the words to describe your feelings, and that is okay too.

You tell some things to some people and not to others because you cannot trust everyone with the same information.

Remind the people who you support that:

• you cannot trust everyone with the same information, and
• only tell someone you trust personal information.

Feelings and how much you trust someone can help you figure out who you touch and who touches you.

Remind the people who you support that feelings and trust can help figure out who you touch and who touches you. Permission should be given to touch or to be touched.

You are at the center of your own “world of relationships” because you are the most important person in your world.

Remind the people who you support that they are the most important person in their world. There may be others in their life who they care about very much, but they are the most important person in their world.

The people in your life are in different places in your “world of relationships” depending on how you trust them, feel around them, what you tell them, and how you touch them.

You can give the people who you support examples of people that they know and then ask them:

• How much do you trust them?
• How do you feel around them?
• What kind of information do you tell them?

You can change your mind about who you trust. This can change how close or distant your relationships are with the different people in your life.

Remind the people who you support that they do not have to trust someone forever. If someone violates their trust or hurts them, they do not have to trust them anymore.

People paid to support you (staff members) may be friendly, but are not necessarily your friends. They do a lot of the same things that friends do, but they are paid for their work. It is possible that a paid staff person could hurt a person on purpose.

Remind the people who you support that paid staff are not their close friends. Many people trust staff members immediately, so be sure to emphasize that if a new staff started their job today, the person who you support would not know whether the staff should be trusted or not.

You must always ask permission before touching or hugging someone.

Remind the people who you support to always ask permission before they touch or hug someone. You should ask permission of the people who you support before you hug or touch them.

Participants identify one person who they can talk to about anything. This person is written on their trust card that they take home.

Remind the people who you support that they wrote a trusted person’s name on their trust card. If the people who you support have an issue you might suggest that they look at their trust card and talk to that person. It does not have to be an emergency. Sometimes it just helps to talk things over with someone.