SSP/DB Curriculum

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Welcome to the webpage for the SSP/DB Curriculum (formerly National Support Service Provider Pilot Project, or NSSPPP)! If you are looking for information on how to train Support Service Providers (SSP) and Deaf-Blind persons on how to use SSPs, you have come to the right place.

The purpose of this website is to provide a resource to trainers of SSPs and Deaf-Blind persons. This includes a curriculum that was developed in Phase I with Department of Education Grant #H235K080014, and available at no cost in four downloadable formats on this website. Phase II, to develop visual educational materials to accompany the curriculum, will start the summer of 2010 and continue for at least one year.

To read or download the text, Providing and Receiving Support Services: Comprehensive Training for Deaf-Blind Persons and Their Support Service Providers, go to the Registration page. Once you register, you will be able to download the full text, or sections of the text. There is no cost! We want to make this curriculum available to anyone who wants to use it.

Background Information
Many people in the United States who are deaf-blind experience both vision and hearing losses. Deaf-Blind people experience communication barriers, limited opportunities for employment and education. Transportation and information about their environment is difficult to access.

A service that can benefit Deaf-Blind individuals is a network of skilled, trained people called Support Service Providers (SSPs). They are specifically trained and hired to work with individuals who have both hearing and vision losses.

Support Service Providers do not fill the roles of personal care attendants, sign language interpreters, or caregivers. They do not make decisions for Deaf-Blind persons. SSPs provide visual and environmental information, sighted guide services and information accessibility to empower deaf-blind individuals so they can make informed decisions.

With the assistance of SSPs, Deaf-Blind people can get and keep a job, do job-related tasks such as reading job announcements, memos and traveling for business, participate in the political process by voting, run errands, read mail, make purchases, and do tasks anyone can do. Deaf-Blind people who have SSP services available, are no longer isolated by barriers to information and businesses, and they can participate more fully in society.

The Deaf-BlindServiceCenter, located in Seattle, WA, has a model SSP program. Deaf-Blind people living in Seattle have received the services of trained SSPs for the past 20 years. Other states want to duplicate this model, but they need training and money to set up SSP services. Research results show that (as of this writing in June 2010) only Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and Utah provide statewide SSP services to their Deaf-Blind citizens. Only nine states, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Washington and Wisconsin have some SSP services in local cities or counties.

The need for national SSP services became an important goal after the 2003 AADB Convention in San Diego, California. During this AADB Convention, members informed the AADB Board about their concerns and need for SSP services nationally. The SeattleDeaf-BlindServiceCenter staff and Board members also approached the AADB Board about the idea of becoming partners to work on establishing national SSP services.

After meeting with members of Congress, the Deaf-Blind Service Center in Washington State began applying for grants to set up the National SSP Pilot Project, with the American Association of the Deaf-Blind in Silver Spring, MD and the Helen Keller National Center in Sands Point, NY, as supporting partners. The partners agreed that the SeattleDeaf-BlindServiceCenter would be the lead agency and be responsible for the administration of the money for the pilot project.
After a few years of trying to obtain funds, through the office of Senator Patty Murray of Washington state, DBSC received enough  funding for Phase I, to develop a curriculum, called Providing and Receiving Support Services: Comprehensive Training for Deaf-Blind Persons and Their Support Service Providers. This project began July 2008 and was completed in June 2010.

Click here for past updates and background info.

The goal for Phase I was to develop:

• Research on best practices nationally
• Interviewing persons, individually and within focus groups, who are currently SSPs or wish to become an SSP
• Interviewing Deaf-Blind persons, individually and within focus groups, who have experienced using or wish to use SSPs
• Gather information on availability and use of SSPs in both urban and rural regions of Washington State focusing on Seattle, Spokane, Yakima and Bellingham
• Develop a draft curriculum for training SSPs and Deaf-Blind persons

In collaboration with Deaf Centers in Yakima and Spokane (representing rural and small urban areas), we trained new SSPs in a pilot test of the draft curriculum, along with Deaf-Blind persons residing in these areas.  A more advanced pilot test was conducted in Seattle with experienced SSPs.  Information from these pilot tests and critical reviews by well-known trainers and consultants in the Deaf-Blind community were incorporated in the final draft of the curriculum.
Tactile Publication

The curriculum, Providing and Receiving Support Services: Comprehensive Training for Deaf-Blind Persons and Their Support Service Providers, has been published in June 2010 avaialble in four formats: regular and large print and Braille grades 1 and 2. All are available at no cost, downloadable from this website. However, as we neared completion of the curriculum, it became clear to us that a fifth avenue of providing the curriculum was necessary. We called this fifth avenue a “tactile publication” where leaders in the Deaf-Blind community will come to three or four meetings in select locations in the United States to receive information about the curriculum and establishing an SSP program. These meetings were held in Boston, Massachusetts, Columbus, Ohio, Rochester, New York and metropolitan Washington, DC. In addition, various tactile publications were provided to agency representatives by videophone nationally and in-person in Seattle.

Principals in the SSP/DB program
Jelica Nuccio until recently was the Executive Director of the Deaf-Blind Service Center for five years. Prior to that, she had an extensive career in the health service field, and graduated from Emory University in 1996 with a Masters degree in Public Health. She does consultation in advocacy and communication access for Deaf-Blind persons, serving in leadership positions at the American Association of Deaf-Blind, Georgia Association of Deaf-Blind and Washington Association of Deaf-Blind; currently Jelica is a member of the Washington State Governor’s Council on Disabilities and Employment.

Theresa Smith was the former director of the Interpreter Training Program at Seattle Central Community College and headed the American Sign Language Interpreting School of Seattle (ASLIS) as its Director.  She is the author of Guidelines for Working and Socializing with Deaf-Blind People published by Sign Media.  She has over thirty years of experience writing curricula, teaching and supervising educational programs.

Rob Roth was the executive director of CSCDHH from 1993 to 1998. He left Seattle in 1998 to take on the reins as executive director for DCARA in the San Francisco Bay area, and moved back to Seattle in 2005. In addition to working on this project, Rob works at the University of Washington, coordinating a summer academy in computing for deaf, hard of hearing and deaf-blind high school and college students. Rob has a Masters degree in Art Education from California State University, Northridge.

Jackie Matthews has worked as an interpreter coordinator at the University of Washington and at the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind, where she also coordinated SSPs. In addition to coordinating interpreters and SSPs for the NSSPPP program, she is a freelance interpreter in the community.

Phase II
Funding for Phase II, to develop visual materials to accompany the Phase I curriculum was approved early in 2010, and work will begin during the summer of 2010. These materials will provide trainers of the curriculum, to both SSPs and deaf-blind persons, with “multi-media PowerPoint” presentations that will include photographs and video clips embedded within the slides. The goal is to have at least one PowerPoint presentation for each lesson in the curriculum. During the development of these materials, we will use curriculum advisers and focus groups to provide us with feedback for improvements. Phase II is targeted to be completed by July 2011.

Special Thanks
The Acknowledgements section of the curriculum mentions many people and their contribution to this curriculum. However, here we would like to sincerely thank Senator Murray and her staff for their support of this project.

Textbook
The textbook to accompany the training for the curriculum, Providing and Receiving Support Services: Comprehensive Training for Deaf-Blind Persons and Their Support Service Providers, is the text, Guidelines: Practical Tips for Working and Socializing with Deaf-Blind People, by Theresa B. Smith and available from Sign Media, Inc. at the website http://store.signmedia.com/1810.html. Embossing services are available fromTechAdapt, Inc. at www.techadapt.com. There will be a charge for the embossing service.