The Hanging Out Program (HOP) is an idea that I came up with in 2007 while working in a day service.
Through my time at the service and the research that I was doing, I began to believe that the best way to enhance interaction was to bring it to the forefront of service provision. The problem, I believed, was not necessarily the skills of the staff to interact, but the culture which did not highlight interaction as being a core part of the job in supporting people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities.
A solution was HOP. HOP involves an attitude and an approach.
One part of the attitude is the believe that everyone benefits from interaction with another person.
The approach is to spend 10 minutes with a person giving them 100% of your attention.
Click here to see the HOP booklet or contact me if me you you’d like to order some hard copy booklets.
I also run HOP workshops. These short workshops involve discussion about interaction, the barriers to interaction, and how to make interaction meaningful to the people with the most severe disabilities. Click here to find out more.
Click HOP flier Kingston 2024 to find out information about the next public HOP workshop.
Click here for the Flier Hanging Out Cafe 2024 or registration page.
Mark Krause conducted this interview with me a number of years ago. It give you a taste of HOP.
You can also join the HOP Facebook group to discuss all things HOP.