Keystone Human Services - Comprehensive community based mental retardation, mental health, autism and early intervention services

Keystone Institute

Library Summaries

One Person at a Time: Citizen Advocacy for people with Disabilities: Adam Hildebrandt describes the establishment and growth of Citizen Advocacy in western Pennsylvania, and the profound impact it has had in the lives of people with disabilities. Back
Rules for Radicals: This primer tells the "have-nots" how they can organize to achieve real political power for the practice of true democracy. Back
Creating Community Anywhere: In our relentless pursuit of independence, many of us have lost our connections to something larger than ourselves. Creating Communities Anywhere looks at the current structures that connect people (or don't) and proposes ones better adapted to the framework of contemporary society. These chapters are the tools for creating community within the many spaces we occupy. An insightful how-to manual, this book is as much about communication and interpersonal dynamics as it is about community building, be it with family and friends, neighborhoods, workplaces or even electronic communities. I found myself rethinking my own definition of community and past periods of self imposed isolation. The alternatives here describe a brighter and much broader way to experience life. Back
Cultivating Thinking Hearts: A compelling collection of letters and lessons about what people truly need, and what creates safety and security within society. These issues are explores through the notion of intentional lifesharing between people with and without disabilities. Back
Developing Leisure Identities: Developing Leisure Identities is a book written for people who are sincerely interested in bringing life back into our communities. It is a book that explores the possibilities and potential of assisting persons who have disabilities with identifying, exploring, and developing meaningful leisure interests. The book takes the reader beyond the simplistic idea of leisure as a "fun way to pass time" and invites us to see leisure as an arena to create meaningful roles in our lives and as a means to identify and express who we are as unique individuals. The book shares with us the experiences and learnings of a pilot project of Brampton Caledon Community Living and the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation. Back
Friendships and Community Connections Between People With and Without Developmental Disabilities: Friendships and Community Connections Between People With and Without Developmental Disabilities Back
Finding People to be There: Rebuilding a Sense of Belonging: This collection of writings comes from the periodical, CRUcial Times, which is published quarterly by Community Resource Unit. Authors include people with disabilities, family members, service providers, and advocates for change. The magazine-style book is divided into six sections, offering articles that provide some insights into how a person with a disability might be supported to get and enjoy a good life. Back
How Can I Help?: Not a day goes by without our being called upon to help one another--at home, at work, on the street, on the phone. . . . We do what we can. Yet so much comes up to complicate this natural response: "Will I have what it takes?" "How much is enough?" "How can I deal with suffering?" "And what really helps, anyway?" In this practical helper's companion, the authors explore a path through these confusions, and provide support and inspiration for us in our efforts as members of the helping professions, as volunteers, as community activists, or simply as friends and family trying to meet each other's needs. Back
Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Use Strategic Thinking to Build a Better Future: Based on the results of more than a decade of research by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, Smart Communities provides directions for strategic decision-making and outlines the key strategies used by thousands of leaders who have worked to create successful communities. Smart Communities offers leaders from both the public and private sectors the tools they need to create a better future for all the community's citizens. Using illustrative examples from communities around the country, Smart Communities shows how these change agents' well-structured decision-making processes can be traced to their effective use of seven key leverage points: Investing right, the first time Working together, Building on community strengths, Practicing democracy, Preserving the past, Growing leaders, Inventing a brighter future Back
The Careless Society: An illuminating look at how the experts' best efforts to rebuild and revitalize communities are in fact destroying them Back
Building Communities From the Inside Out: This guide summarizes lessons learned by studying successful community building initiatives in hundreds of neighborhoods across the U.S. It outlines what local communities can do to start their own journeys down the path of asset based development Back
Relationships and Everyday Lives: This collection expands our thinking about relationships and community, offering examples from the lives of those who have dared to believe that people with disability can experience positive, reciprocal relationships, sustained and developed over time. It will be an important resource for people with disabilities, their families and all who join the contributors' vision of lives lived in relationship and community Back
The Whole Community Catalogue: Welcoming people with disabilities into the heart of community life. A source book for enriching communities, neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces, associations and families through full participation and inclusion of people who have disabilities. A collection of essential articles, ideas, and connections re: relationships, housing, personal support networks, education and vocations Back
The Wealth of Friendship: Exploring Relationships between Disabled and Non Disabled Adults: Funded by Massachusetts DMR, this grant project explores the concept of friendships between disabled and non-disabled individuals and what make them work. Eight pairs of friends were interviewed and asked the questions, "Why do so many people with significant impairments not have friends or valued relationships?", "What are the benefits of friendship, and a valued relationship, to the person with impairments? Without impairments?" and "What draws people together? Why bother being friends with a person with impairments and what makes such relationships work?" Back
Social Capital: Critical Perspectives: SOCIAL capital-broadly, social networks, the reciprocities that arise from them, and the value of these for achieving mutual goals-has become an influential concept in debating and understanding the modern world. Back
American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism: The Nazis may have given eugenics its negative connotations, but the practice-and the "science" that supports it-is still disturbingly alive in America in anti-immigration initiatives, the quest for a "gay gene," and theories of collective intelligence. Tracing the historical roots and persistence of eugenics in the United States, Nancy Ordover explores the political and cultural climate that has endowed these campaigns with mass appeal and scientific legitimacy. Back
Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom: Wendy Kline's lucid cultural history of eugenics in America emphasizes the movement's central, continuing interaction with popular notions of gender and morality. Kline shows how eugenics could seem a viable solution to problems of moral disorder and sexuality, especially female sexuality, during the first half of the twentieth century. Its appeal to social conscience and shared desires to strengthen the family and civilization sparked widespread public as well as scientific interest. Kline traces this growing public interest by looking at a variety of sources, including the astonishing "morality masque" that climaxed the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition; the nationwide correspondence of the influential Human Betterment Foundation in Pasadena, California; the medical and patient records of a "model" state institution that sterilized thousands of allegedly feebleminded women in California between 1900 and 1960; the surprising political and popular support for sterilization that survived initialinterest in, and then disassociation from, Nazi eugenics policies; and a widely publicized court case in 1936 involving the sterilization of a wealthy young woman deemed unworthy by her mother of having children.; Kline's engaging account reflects the shift from "negative eugenics" (preventing procreation of the "unfit") to "positive eugenics," which encouraged procreation of the "fit," and it reveals that the "golden age" of eugenics actually occurred long after most historians claim the movement had vanished. The middle-class "passion for parenthood" in the '50s had its roots, she finds, in the positive eugenics campaign of the '30s and '40s. Many issues that originated in the eugenics movement remain controversial today, such as the use of IQ testing, the medical ethics of sterilization, the moral and legal implications of cloning and genetic screening, and even the debate on family values of the 1990s. Building a Better Race not only places eugenics at the center of modern reevaluations of female sexuality and morality but also acknowledges eugenics as an essential aspect of major social and cultural movements in the twentieth century. Back
The Black Stork: Eugenics and The Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915: In the late 1910s, Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, a prominent Chicago surgeon, electrified the nation by allowing the deaths of at least six infants he diagnosed as "defectives." Martin Pernick tells this captivating story--uncovering forgotten sources and long-lost motion pictures--in order to show how efforts to improve human heredity (eugenics) became linked with mercy killing, as well as with race, class, gender and ethnicity. Back
The Culture of Death: Wesley Smith spoke at the 2003 International SRV Conference in Calgary, and by all accounts was a compelling thinker and speaker. Read about his take on today's "bio-ethics" and what it means for people who we care about. Back
The Nazi Doctors: Nazi doctors did more than conduct bizarre experiments on concentration-camp inmates; they supervised the entire process of medical mass murder, from selecting those who were to be exterminated to disposing of corpses. Lifton (The Broken Connection; The Life of the Self shows that this medically supervised killing was done in the name of "healing," as part of a racist program to cleanse the Aryan body politic. After the German eugenics campaign of the 1920s for forced sterilization of the "unfit", it was but one step to "euthanasia," which in the Nazi context meant systematic murder of Jews. Building on interviews with former Nazi physicians and their prisoners, Lifton presents a disturbing portrait of careerists who killed to overcome feelings of powerlessness. He includes a chapter on Josef Mengele and one on Eduard Wirths, the "kind," "decent" doctor (as some inmates described him) who set up the Auschwitz death machinery. Lifton also psychoanalyzes the German people, scarred by the devastation of World War I and mystically seeking regeneration. This profound study ranks with the most insightful books on the Holocaust. Back
In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity: In the 19th century, when the idea of eugenics (selective breeding to generate superior members of a species) was invited off the farm and into the parlor, it was a far-fetched notion with little possibility of success driven by clearly racist motivations. But at the end of the 20th century, biotechnological techniques and other agendas are making forms of human eugenics plausible. Back
The New Genocide: Dr. Wolfensberger, in this brief monograph, outlines his assertions about the death making of devalued people. This monograph accompanies some, some nowhere near all, of the materials in the five day Sanctity of Life workshop. Back
Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland: The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews This book has great significance in understanding the vulnerability of devalued people by seeing how people can be led easily to do great harm to others. Back
By Trust Betrayed: Gallagher's strong study of the murder of disabled people in the Third Reich receives new attention in a revised edition which includes some modern sentiments and moral issues relating to both the events of the past and the concerns of modern times. Back
War Against the Weak: Another MUST-READ for those interested in the history of the treatment of people with disabilities and other devalued people. This painstakingly researched and documented, yet quite readable narrative recounts the history of eugenics in this country, the fruits of eugenics, and the legacy that is living on today. There are lots of books out now on eugenics. This is the most comprehensive to date. Back
Nazi Medicine: In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine" is a 60-minute documentary by Professor John J. Michalczyk, Director of Film Studies at Boston College, made in 1997, which was the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg Physicians Trial, which was held from December 1946 to August 1947. Michalczyk went to the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps to interview both survivors of the Nazi experimentations and leader scholars who studied the practices of Nazi medicine such as Dr. Michael Grodin, Dr. Charles Roland, and Professor Michael Kater. There is also an interview done at Auschwitz in 1995 with Hans Munch, a former S.S. doctor in this video, which is narrated by Donald Winning. Nazi Medicine" chronicles the path of these scientists, who began providing justification for the Nuremberg sterilization laws, the practice of euthanasia, and eventually to genocide. Back