About Josephine Massarelli
Jo Massarelli is Founding Director of the SRV Implementation Project based in Worcester, Massachusetts (USA). She divides her time between teaching Social Role Valorization-based workshops, and working with families, human service staff and people with impairments to bring about positive change for individuals with impairments, one person at a time.
She teaches at workshops and lectures at conferences across the United States and Canada on issues concerning people devalued due to mental retardation, mental disorder, physical impairment, age (elders), and poverty. * Ms. Massarelli has evaluated numerous human service programs for children, adults and elders, including residential, day and work programs, schools, hospice, prisons, and homeless shelters.
Ms. Massarelli has been closely affiliated with Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger of the Training Institute in Syracuse, New York (USA) since 1983.* * She is a member of the International SRV Training, Development and Safeguarding Council.
She is involved with Dr. Wolfensberger and others in teaching workshops on how to provide service that is morally coherent in a disfunctional human service world, and how to craft a coherent protective stance in the face of current threats to the lives of socially devalued people.
Ms. Massarelli has a particular interest in advocacy in medical settings. She teaches a variety of workshops on protecting vulnerable people in the hospital, and on medical decision making. She has co-written a manual based on these workshops. She is also a member of the Medical Safeguards Project, a group of nurses and doctors in Massachusetts who are committed to safeguarding the health and lives of mentally retarded people with significant medical needs.
Ms. Massarelli serves as an advocate associate to the North Quabbin Citizen Advocacy project. She is involved in training Citizen Advocacy boards and advocates in how social devaluation affects human service recipients.
Jo Massarelli and her husband Marc Tumeinski are members of a community responding to the needs of homeless people in Worcester, Massachusetts, where they reside. They offer hospitality to the poor as an integral part of their homelife.
For a listing of workshops also see SRVIP material listed in the Massachusetts .
Jo Massarelli & Marc TumeinskiSRVIP
SRV Implementation Project,
74 Elm Street, Worcester, MA 01609.
Phonel:508/752.3670
jo@srvip.org
www.srvip.org/