How to Skin a Cat

At the Lanterman 2000 Conference in Los Angeles in 1989, Nancy Rosenau of the Macomb-Oakland Regional Center, Inc. (MORC) in Detroit, Michigan, spoke on getting kids out of institutions and into families. "We had to face the fact that these things where people lived that weren't families were like a cat with nine lives. When we called them orphanages, everybody agreed that was lousy. That didn't work and we don't do that any more. We called them nursing homes, developmental centers, residential schools, group homes. You will note there are nine lives to this cat. I'm hoping it's just a cat. Because we know how to skin a cat. There's lots of ways to do that. Mark Twain said one of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives. Well, were going to hope it is a cat and not a lie. Because, then we can take care of it. If it is a lie, then we will have to work harder and longer. Here is how we began to skin the cat in our area." To see and hear "How to skin the cat." you will need Real Player

1. Don't expect the cat to volunteer. The institutions, the nursing homes, the congregate care facilities weren't going to volunteer to go out of business. That was a fact of life. We dealt with it.

2. Expose the masquerade. The cat in sheep's clothing. We have a thing in Michigan called a skilled nursing facility. I don't know if you do out here as well. You ask yourself what's so skilled about a skilled nursing facility.

3. Shut the door. If you do nothing else, do not admit one more child to an institution.

4. Cut off the food supply. It took us only 16 children and placing those 16 children in families to close a 150 bed nursing home. On the premise that the nursing home is paid for the people who live there and they are not paid when the bed is empty.

5. Pull out the whiskers one at a time.

You might think that is the longest and slowest, but I submit that is the one that did us the most good.

6. Get to the cat feeder. We invite legislators on a routine basis to go visit. We have them visit the nursing homes, visit a family. Visit an institution, visit a family. Go sit in the living room and look at this child with the same kind of needs as this child and ask yourself where would you like your child to grow up.

7. Get to the cat breeders. Those departments that together with their aninimity from the real kids, keep kids in those kinds of places funded. We put a hook into the budget. No more children will go into those kind of settings until they have a chance to talk to us first. The families don't want that stuff. They only want that stuff, because they were told they want that stuff.

8. Don't wait for the cat catcher. The Department of Public Health was the entity that surveyed all these nursing homes. The Department of Mental Health was the agency that surveyed all these institutions. It didn't catch itself.

9. Redirect energy and celebrate families.

Doesn't fit my analogy. Redirect the energy and interest of what we do from the cat shows to the families and celebrate families

Other references by Nancy Rosenau:

All Children Belong in Families discusses why children belong in families and how to assure families for all children.