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Show Don Selin receives Golden Key Award 4 ' v H. Don Selin, a clinical social worker at the Utah State Training School, was presented with the Golden Key Service Award by the Governor's Committee on Employment Em-ployment of the Handicapped held recently. Mr. Selin says he was nominated for the award by a Cerebral Palsy group called "Wheelpower" because the help he gave them. The group, he says, no longer exists, but members felt lie "understood them better than anyone else they knew. They felt I cared, that I would listen." Mr. Selin says he has always tried to go the extra mile in dealing with individuals with handicaps. "Caring is so important in dealing with people with handicapped," he said, adding, "Understanding is not necessasarily agreeing with them, but the important thing is you listen." Mr. Selin started his employment as a psychiatric and medical social worker at a Veterans Administration Ad-ministration Hospital in San Francisco, California, working with paraplegics. After serving part time as a family counselor with the Family Services Agency in San Jose, Calif., he was employed as senior psychiatric social worker at the State Hospital in Agnew, Calif. That was a 4,700 bed mental hospital and about half of the patients were "warehoused," he recalled, saying "it got to be very frustrating very quickly." From California, Mr. Selin moved to Idaho where he was chief clinical social worker and later director of the training services department at the Idaho State Hospital and Training School. "This was an institution in-stitution like this one (the training school) and they didn't have any program for clinical socialworkers. I saw it as a challenge and got the program going." Five years later, he moved to Wyoming where he was mental health counselor part time at the Rock Springs Clinic and director of the psychiatric social services department at the Wyoming State Hospital. "I was the first social worker there" and again he assumed statewide responsibility and got the program going. Leaving Wyoming, he took a position as assistant professor of social work at the University of Utah, training students in clinical social work. He says he brought many of his students to the training school to train - so it was only natural that he join the staff at the training school on his next move. He has served as medical social work consultant at the school, and as planner for the Utah Council for the Handicapped and Developmentally Disabled Persons. Presently he is a member of a interdisciplinary clinical team at the school. "I have always wanted to work with people and to help them, even when I was a kid in school," Mr. Selin recalls, saying his career has been "very satisfying, but frustrating. There are so many needs out there (in helping individuals in-dividuals with handicaps) and we keep finding more. We are identifying iden-tifying more people who aren't in the system and who need help. We need to work and find what those needs are and focus on what needs to be done to implement services." Mr. Selin said for years he traveled on his own time - a lot of it at night - to try to find out the needs of the handicapped in the state. Born in Benjamin, he went to the Southern States on a mission for the LDS Church where, he says, he lived with share croppers and first came to know what poverity really is. He spent three years in the service during World War II where he smiles he was a "PFC by act of Congress." Although he studied sociology and speech and secondary education at college, he opted into the field of Social Work. "It didn't pay very much but it promised to be exciting." ex-citing." He said working with people with handicapped has made it all worthwhile. wor-thwhile. "The handicapped are so appreciative of so little when they haven't had even that. It is a very satisfying thing." Mr. Selin says all of his personal and professional interests relate back a firm conviction as to the potential if not present worth of H-DonSelin every man, and tha( , . spintual progress achievement th'S. 3 caring, love, of a kin&. interfere with self JS wherever and however "V Primary interest," |