Helping Adults Gain Complementary Skills

Community Resources

If you were to find out tomorrow that a family member or a close friend had a serious illness such as cancer, what would you do?  You would probably begin the process of finding out everything you could about the disease.  You might search the Internet to see the latest treatments.  You might contact your own doctor and ask questions.  You might also contact an organization, such as the American Cancer Society, to see what information and assistance could be provided. From such an organization, you might find out the location of the most successful treatment centers. You might also learn about support groups that provide family members and friends counseling services during this difficult time.  The important thing to remember is that you would seek to understand the situation more clearly, identify ways to address the situation and then develop an action plan.

Every community has a number of organizations, agencies and groups that are there to help other people.  Whether it is a local church or a vast array of agencies and organizations, virtually every community has resources available to the people who live there - if they know how to access them.  One part of your job as the VPI instructor is to know what the resources are and what they can do to help.  Another part of your job as the VPI instructor is to refer people to these services when they need them.  But the most important part of your job in this area is to give your students the skills they need to find and access resources on their own.  You won't always be there to point them in the right direction, however if they know how to find appropriate resources, they can access them whenever the need arises.