SRVIP Personnel
Jo Massarelli
Director
 Jo Massarelli is Director of the SRV Implementation Project,
a human service training and consultation concern based in
Worcester, Massachusetts (USA). She divides her time at the
project between teaching Social Role Valorization-based workshops,
and working with families, human service staff and people with
impairments to bring about positive change, one person at a
time.
She has taught at workshops and lectured at conferences across
the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand to a variety
of human service workers serving a wide range of people devalued
due to intellectual impairment, mental disorder, physical impairment,
age (elders), and poverty. Ms. Massarelli has also evaluated
dozens of human service programs for children, adults and elders,
including residential, day and work programs, schools, hospice,
prisons, and homeless shelters.
Ms. Massarelli has been a teacher closely affiliated with
Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger of the Training Institute in Syracuse,
New York (USA) since 1983. She is a member and Senior Trainer
of the International SRV Training, Development and Safeguarding
Council, which meets twice a year to further develop SRV and
keep it relevant to changing human service contexts. With Dr.
Wolfensberger and a group of associates, she is heavily involved
in teaching workshops on two crucial topics: 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 serious societal 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, which
is a group of nurses and doctors in Massachusetts who are committed
to safeguarding the health and lives of mentally impaired people
with significant medical needs. Ms. Massarelli serves as a
consultant for Family Lives, a program for children with multiple
impairments who require twenty-four hour nursing care. Family
Lives is committed to providing the medical support necessary
for the children to live at home, and Ms. Massarelli works
to assist family and nurses alike to envision and realize more
than the "patient" role for those served.
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 voluntary community responding to the needs of homeless people
in Worcester, Massachusetts, where they live. They offer hospitality
to poor and homeless people in their home.
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