GHDC: Principles

Background

In 1994, Generations of Hope, Inc., under the leadership of Brenda Krause Eheart and Carolyn Casteel, established Hope Meadows, an intergenerational neighborhood for families seeking to adopt foster children. Hope Meadows has evolved into a neighborhood where all of its residents work to meet one another's needs; it is the first example of what is now referred to as a Generations of Hope Community or GHC.

A GHC is a geographically contiguous intergenerational neighborhood, where some of the residents are facing a specific challenge around which the entire community organizes (e.g. youth exiting juvenile justice, young mothers re-entering society after incarceration or drug treatment, homeless families). The term Intergenerational Community as Intervention (ICI) refers to the distinctive strategy used in GHCs to facilitate and support naturally emergent alliance, relationships, and enduring commitments across generational lines. In a GHC, professional services become subordinate to the support and serives--the intervention--provided by the community.

The practices and policies of a GHC are grounded in both general philosophical principles and ICI principles.

General Philosophical Principles

1. Viewing residents through a positive lens

GHC residents, including those whose social challenge provides the organizing focus of the community, must not be viewed as problems-to-be-managed, but as ordinary people requiring the same embeddedness in family and community that we would want for ourselves. All residents (children, adults, and older adults) must be viewed as if they were members of our own family and decisions must be made accordingly.

2. The enduring capacity of the individual to care

Given the opportunity, ordinary people of all ages and vulnerabilities will care for one another in ways, and to a degree, that go beyond the scope of traditional interventions. It is these caring relationships that shift the focus of problem-solving from professional service providers to the members of the community. There must be an emphasis on individual strengths and a belief in everyone's capacity to care for themselves and others.

ICI Principles

1. Created to address a specific social challenge

These neighborhoods are created to deal directly with a salient social challenge (e.g. foster care, juvenile justice, homelessness) that has potential long-term consequences. These challenges involve persons whose broad range of needs is usually too great to be satisfied solely by family or friends, and for whom formal service systems are often too limited or restrictive.

2. Presence of three or more generations

Residents span at least three generations. Families with children and youth, and older adults constitute the right mix to develop the necessary level of proficiency in the community’s capacity to care for and support its residents.

3. Physical design facilitates relationships and aging in community

The purposeful integration of the physical dimensions of the neighborhood, with all buildings being geographically contiguous, provides the context for the formation and development of the social dimensions of a caring community. Important considerations include the changing needs of families, youth, and aging seniors.

4. Practice grounded in theory and research

Programs, policies, and practice are empirically grounded in theory and research on what people need to develop well across the lifespan and on components of effective programs for children, families, older adults, and communities.

5. Evolving program design/learning from experience

To be effective the community must be allowed to adapt over time, filling in the details as residents gain experience with one another. The design must be flexible and responsive to the changing needs of the people in the neighborhood.

6. Older adults are the community’s volunteers

The community’s volunteers exchange hours of service to the neighborhood for physical and material support, such as reduced rent and modified housing. Volunteers mainly have an identity as givers, not recipients, of service.

7. Requisite diversity

In the neighborhood the inherent diversity of age is enhanced by the requisite diversity of race, ethnicity, education, income, life experience, and perspective. Living with differences helps all involved to find creative solutions to complex problems and prepares them for living in a diverse society.

8. Professional staff know when to guide and when to govern

The expertise of professional staff is essential for a wide range of managerial and programmatic functions; however, staff practice is most effective when characterized by relationship building and consent rather than control.

9. Economic issues are addressed but do not compromise principles

Economic issues are addressed, but they must not overshadow or compromise the primary reasons for creating the program or other core principles. If economic factors dominate, the neighborhood mission is likely to become subordinate to those considerations.

10. Cohesion stopping short of insularity

A mission-driven neighborhood like Hope Meadows offers a stronger kind of social support than is generally available elsewhere, while letting its residents live their lives as much as possible like they would in any other healthy neighborhood. It is not a retreat or enclave, a place set apart both physically and symbolically. The more it blends in with the larger community in which it is situated, the less the stigma associated with the need it serves.