Beginning with this issue, as a regular feature of our newsletter I will contribute a brief article related to CQI and/or staff training, along with the occasional philosophical or musical meandering.

For my first contribution I want to refer to a key feature of The Mandt System training material, namely Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The Mandt System uses Maslow’s Hierarchy to explain how unmet needs will make building healthy relationship difficult if not impossible.  According to Maslow, our most basic needs are survival needs (food, water and shelter).  Only when these needs are met can we begin to address the next level of need, which is that of safety and security.

Safety and security have both physical and emotional components.  To build healthy relationships (Maslow’s next level of needs) one must possess both physical and emotional security.  But the emotional component is often forgotten or ignored.  The experience of trauma can result in creating a fragile emotional state in people, a state marked by insecurity.

Think about the work we do.  Do the people you support have emotional security?  What do you need to do to help someone attain emotional security so that they can move to building healthy relationships? 

It is highly probable that those two questions are the most import ones to ask, and the ones asked least often.

Cheers,

David

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
- Plato