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LiveWorkPlay
For People With Intellectual Disabilities
Making A Buzz In The Ottawa Area Since 1995
"SUCCESS THROUGH COMMUNITY"
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STAFF VISIONING 2005
After the annual Visioning Day in June, LWP staff collected all the feedback and once the ACES summer learning program was over set aside 3 nights and 3 days to take a look at LWP operations from top to bottom and develop short-term, medium-term, and long-term plans to take the organization forward in pursuit of its mission.
This was a special staff visioning activity because it was also a starting point of sorts for Grace Hudson and Allison Moores. Although they have each been very involved with LWP for some years, their new status as members of the LWP staff team was announced just days ago. This long weekend together with Keenan Wellar and Julie Kingstone would be the first opportunity for the team to work together as a staff unit.
About six hours was spent on Friday going over a variety of important foundational documents. This sounds rather boring, but although it is routine, building something really great requires a strong foundation. This means a staff manual that meets the needs of both the employees and the organization, and the establishment of expectations that are clear and fair.
Some 20 pages of detailed staff competencies were also discussed and reviewed. There is no one alive who has achieved mastery of all of the hundreds of areas identified, but we can all keep improving, and we can share expertise to grow as a team.
It was also important to look at the new mission (to be discussed at the Annual General Meeting in September) that has been developed by the Board of Directors after a year long process of following the John Carver Policy Governance model. It is only in the context of realizing the mission that the staff team can evaluate the operations they manage and supervise on a daily basis and make the changes necessary to improve them.
Most of a long but productive 15 hours on Saturday was dedicated to the SMILE circle of supports. It is the largest program (in terms of people served and resources allocated) at LiveWorkPlay and by far the most complex. SMILE has been evolving for the past 5 years, mainly in response to feedback from participants, which is also informed by input from parents, whether formally through Visioning Day or informally through ongoing communication.
A lot of time was spent talking about the relationship between self-advocacy and self-esteem. If you don't have healthy self-esteem, the expectation of personal growth and increased self-advocacy is unrealistic. So what changes could be made at SMILE to make a difference?
Something that came up often was personal organization. Although there are a lot of tools in place to help SMILE participants manage their own schedules, the tools could be enhanced and improved, and more time could be allocated for staff to assist in their use. This is a serious issue, because having to rely on others (LWP staff, parents, siblings) to know where you are supposed to be and what you are supposed to be doing makes self-advocacy difficult.
This does not mean that SMILE participants should never get help with personal organization - everyone needs help with that from time to time! But over the years at SMILE as "self-management" has grown as a priority, staff, parents, and the participants themselves have commented on the increasing levels of self-confidence, which contributes to the ability to make more of one's own decisions.
David Hingsburger continues to be an important influence. The team watched some of his videos and paid particular attention to his messages about privacy. Privacy is not an instinct, it has to be learned. Many people with intellectual disabilities have difficulty with privacy issues because they are quite complex. Their application also requires a great deal of ability in understanding social contexts, which is typically a challenge for people with intellectual disabilities.
LiveWorkPlay has been supporting Journeys, SMILE, and ACES participants to work on privacy issues for many years now, but from listening to Hingsburger and thinking about how his teachings relate to LWP programs, there are some ideas that need to be added and some that need to be reinforced. Whether it is about having one's own privacy violated or violating the privacy of others, the potential consequences could not be more serious, so the issue deserves increased attention.
This connects with another important decision about SMILE. The program has always been about offering participants a lot of choice in terms of what they choose to do, and in fact, most of the ideas for the sessions come directly from participants. But in order to reliaze the LWP mission, there are some types of learning that need to be at the core of all LWP programs, including SMILE. This means that all participants will be expected to take part in the core sessions wherever possible.
This does not mean that choice will not continue to be an important feature of SMILE. There will be a wide variety of elective opportunities - old and new - that participants can choose to complete their schedule.
The staff team also heard the message from Visioning Day that parents and participants alike want more help from LWP to facilitate social interaction outside of regular SMILE schedules. Journeys parents and participants were also on board with this idea. There are limits to what can be done to support Journeys in this way, but some interesting suggestions came up and they will be presented in September.
SMILE participants will also be presented with ideas for increased interaction beyond the SMILE routine, and if they are interested some staff support will be provided to make it happen.
There was also discussion about volunteers - supporting them and helping them support participants. Some volunteers have offered to take on additional responsibilities and that's an offer we need and want to respond to. In response to feedback from volunteer surveys, it's also important to continue clarifying how the volunteer role fits in to program objectives, and how program objectives relate to the mission of the organization.
You are probably wondering by this time what went on Sunday and Monday! For both of these days the team read, discussed, and completed exercises to learn more about the Cognitive Therapy approach to self-esteem.
The principles of this approach have already been used successfully in the LiveWorkPlay environment, mostly in the context of individual support. With the renewed emphasis on self-esteem, supporting participants to become more aware of their own thoughts and feelings and how to control them is a bigger priority than ever before, and starting in September participants will be introduced to tools that can help them take greater control over their own quality of life.
As the long weekend of hard work drew to a close, the team focused on some practical issues, such as critical dates for September, and also decided to come up with the one thing they were most looking forward to with the start of a new program year. Here's what they said!
Allison: I look forward to seeing how everyone will respond to the ideas we have discussed and also to working in an environment that I am confident I will enjoy!
Keenan: Things will get very busy for everyone in September but I am very hopeful that we can continue to work as a team like we did this weekend and find ways to make LiveWorkPlay better for participants and their families.
Julie: I am excited to see if the additional tools and support in personal organization we have talked about will result in improved self-confidence for the SMILE participants.
Grace: I am looking forward to the excitement of the first week and seeing how successful we can be in supporting the participants to understand and benefit from important changes.
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153 Chapel Street, Suite 300 | Ottawa, Ontario | K1N 1H5 | 613-235-9550
info@liveworkplay.ca | www.liveworkplay.ca
Charitable Registration 89622 2775 RR 0001
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