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Staff Spotlight: Nadine Wisher

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Direct Support Professional, Developmental Services

Nadine Wisher has served clients of United Counseling Service (UCS)’s Developmental Services division for almost 45 years. A Bennington, VT, native, she moved home after studying therapeutic recreation in college and saw an ad for a job at UCS in the paper. She applied and never looked back.

Nadine started working in one of UCS’ group homes for adults with developmental disabilities, then as a direct support professional, and then as a group home manager. Though she has worked for the agency longer than any staff member, her passion for the job has yet to fade. For Nadine, the client she serves every day inspire her to keep going. “The best part of my job is the people I work for—meaning the clients,” says Nadine. “It’s unconditional from them. They appreciate everything you’re helping them with or that they’re learning.”

Nadine is a Direct Support Professional in the Community Supports program at UCS, and her workdays look different day to day depending on her clients’ schedules and interests. Her job is to find activities in the community that might interest her clients—whether that means gardening, raspberry picking, or spending the day at a local museum. “Anything we see in the community that somebody might be interested in, we’ll jump on it,” says Nadine. Current opportunities include tennis, music, an American Sign Language class, swimming, gardening club at the Bennington Community Garden, a client-led cooking class, and much more. The instructor of cooking class plans to create a cookbook of her recipes.

Clients can also drop in on men’s group and women’s group, the latter of which Nadine hosts. Women’s group meets weekly throughout the summer and clients talk with each other over a picnic lunch. Members of women’s group can drop in as they like and are not obligated to attend. They also make trips around the community—In August, women’s group will visit North Bennington to view art in the park. At the beginning of each month, Nadine asks clients how they would like to spend their time, and she builds her schedule around their feedback.

Clients may not know what they like doing, so Nadine encourages them to find what they enjoy and what they don’t. UCS has many older clients who lived in institutions for people with developmental disabilities before Vermont closed its facilities. Now, UCS clients participate in community-based programs and some live full time in UCS’ residential group homes in Bennington. “A lot of our clients either come from the institution where you’re just a number, or a situation where it wasn’t really to their best advantage,” says Nadine. “Coming here and learning that there’s more out there for them, and seeing it come true, is very rewarding.”

She thinks of her clients through the years who came so far during the course of their time together. She remembers some clients expressing disruptive behaviors because they felt unsure of themselves when she first met them. Now, it’s a different story. “Sometimes it’s a very slow process,” says Nadine, “Through the work we’ve done here, they are now job holders and living their best lives. I think that’s what gets me kind of emotional. It took years to do that—it wasn’t an overnight process. They come from sometimes very difficult backgrounds, and they just need somebody to say, ‘you can do it.’”

Nadine credits the longevity of her work to her genuine enjoyment of the clients she serves, and to dedication to her own health. Along with traveling and spending time with her two grandchildren, Nadine exercises. At 65, she sees many of her peers declining, but she feels strong. “I’m an exercise freak,” she says. “I love to exercise, any kind of exercise—I’m for it. I like to swim, run, I’ve done triathlons.” Nadine doesn’t plan on slowing down, though she plans to spend her next chapter enjoying the hard work she put in all these years. The word retirement, though she describes it as bittersweet, is happily on the horizon.

Nadine seems to always be on the move and her next adventure takes her to the Gulf of Mexico in two days. “We’re going scalloping!” she says. When retirement comes, she looks forward to a celebratory family trip planned by her daughter. “When I retire, my granddaughter will be old enough to ride the rides at Disney World.”

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