Associate
Joe Osburn has worked in human services since 1964, in a variety of direct service, administrative, and consultative positions primarily with poor families and families with handicapped children. Since 1974, his work has focused particularly on the dissemination and application of normalization/Social Role Valorization (SRV) as a major safeguard in the lives of impaired, poor, elderly, and other socially vulnerable people. He has visited and assessed many different types of human services throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia. Currently, he directs the Indiana Safeguards Initiative, a non-profit SRV-based project established in 1991. His main activities include planning and conducting SRV and related training for providers and recipients of services; coordinating and leading comprehensive in-depth evaluations of service quality of human service programs, agencies, and service systems; writing; and other related SRV-based projects. He is currently part of a group of SRV trainers and teachers working to disseminate the concept of model coherency developed by Wolf Wolfensberger Ph.D. Joe is on the editorial board of The SRV Journal.
Joe maintained a long affiliation with Dr. Wolfensberger, the formulator of Social Role Valorization. He is a member of the North American SRV Development, Training & Safeguarding Council. He has been a guest lecturer at colleges and universities, and also has been a presenter at many conferences, meetings, and similar events. Joe has served as consultant to some small communal organizations that practice hospitality, life-sharing, or other forms of solidarity with socially vulnerable families and individuals.