Vantage Point

High turnover is a serious issue in human service organizations. And, studies have shown that highly effective training of new employees is essential if you wish to keep them. A new employee who is responsible for serving and supporting a person with disabilities must learn quickly. But, how can he or she possibly understand how the person with a disability feels? Vantage Point, an innovative orientation program, puts the new employee into the place of a person who cannot walk, a person who cannot see, and persons who have other disabilities. In a vivid and personal account, journalist Jim Heikkinen describes his first day as a new employee experiencing Vantage Point. Then, George Suess outlines the steps needed to start a Vantage Point program, effective methods for teaching empathy quickly, and ways to remove common stumbling blocks in the training process.