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WORKSHOPS SERVICE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT FACILITATION EVALUATION PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES
Inclusion: The core business of human service. When we strip away the rhetoric of the annual reports, underlying all human service to people devalued by society is for them to BELONG. In times past, this was implied to mean "belong with 'their own kind'" and some of the segregated buildings and processes still in use today reflect these assumptions. However, almost all agencies now see that it is right that devalued people, who have been traditionally segregated and congregated with others of a similar label, should be full participating members of the community -- they should BELONG. However, this is hard. For centuries the society has rejected various groups, with families and human services often being the only allies who would see them as individuals with real needs. Unfortunately, many of the systems and services that we developed were segregated to provide a 'haven' from a rejecting society, and grouped people together around a devalued label. While developed with the best of intentions, in many ways it reinforced the isolation. If the families and other experts in human service segregated and congregated around a devaluing label such as disability or skin colour, then it should not surprise us that society accepted this state of affairs. How do we change this? Will society accept people who traditionally have been devalued? If we want a person to belong, what does 'belong' mean? What facets of support are best and worst for building belonging in mainstream society? What is an appropriate vision for the people that our agency responds to ? How can we share that vision with families who are very aware of their son or daughter's vulnerability but want a better life for the person? We can help. A range of staff training workshops have been developed, and these can be tailored to your needs or new ones developed as necessary. The focus of workshops is disability, aged care, human service generally, community development and psychological issues. They have relevance to early intervention; working with families; service design and renewal; day service; residential service, and community development. The generality or specific orientation is altered according to the needs of the agency and workshop participants. Some possible workshops are:
#A range of education specific workshops are listed in the schools section. * Run by other presenters or organisations supported by Include Pty Ltd. Workshops can be from a 1 hour presentation to the 10 day Leadership workshop run through the Disability Services Commission. The aim of all workshops is to be interactive and allow a lot of participant involvement to maximise learning. Workshops consistently receive very high ratings from participants and Dr Bob Jackson has been a recipient of a Commonwealth Government supported University Award for excellence in teaching, awarded for community workshops run over several years with Professor Errol Cocks and others national and international presenters. Costs will vary depending on the time, whether national/international presenters are used, whether repeat workshops are involved. Costs are negotiable for multiple workshops or continuing involvement of Include Pty Ltd. Service Design and Development A century or so ago, good people, expert in their field, designed institutions as the ideal service method for residential care. We now universally see this as a dreadful mistake and pour scorn on the lack of vision present in those service designers. Of course we now have got it right haven't we? People in 50 years will look at what we have produced with amazement at our foresight and clarity won't they? If you believe this, you won't be interested in our services! If you have some humility and know that our capacity for doing harm is great, our consciousness limited and good intentions are not enough, then you will benefit from our consultancy. Include Pty Ltd works from the basis of trying to get detailed information on the nature of the service users and their most fundamental needs, and then designing an ideal service around those needs. Only when this is done will we retreat from the ideal based on the inevitable compromises that are a fact of life in human service. That is, we don't start with a budget, or a building, and then design a service as this forces us into not even considering what the ideal might be. We believe if we have the ideal in mind we are more likely to achieve a service design closer to it, and we will know what we are striving for in the future when the inevitable compromises limit what we can immediately achieve. Include Pty Ltd uses the approach based on 'Model Coherency' designed by Professor Wolf Wolfensberger, which starts from the underpinning assumptions and principles of a service, draws out the nature and fundamental needs of the service users, determines a service area or 'purpose', and then designs a coherent set of processes to meet those needs and service purpose. All this service design is done with the key stakeholders, including the service users, families, staff, management and others with a clear stake in the outcomes. Outcomes are normally a clear purpose, a vision of an ideal, a practical means to work from in achieving the ideal and a sense of commitment coming from the clarity and consciousness of the issues. Costs will depend on the amount of time involved and the extent of continuing involvement. Reduced rates may be negotiable for extended involvement or for family groups with limited resources. For approximate costs, click here. When working with staff and families, agencies often need to discuss an issue in some depth in a free-ranging way. This normally requires an independent person to facilitate the meeting so that families or staff feel that their views are being heard and the event is not 'stage managed' by the agency. However, the facilitator needs to be aware of the issues, sensitive to the viewpoints of both the agency and staff or families, and experienced enough to point a new direction for consideration if issues become bogged down. Staff of Include Pty Ltd have long experience of conducting facilitation with a range of agencies in disability, aged care and education. Similarly, when issues between parties have become heated and relationships have broken down, Include Pty Ltd can fulfil the role of 'honest broker' to mediate and help to resolve the dispute. With the reputation of Include Pty Ltd staff stretching back decades, both agencies and staff/families will know that the intervention will be independent and considered, with the best interests of clients being the essential reference point. For current charges, click here. How is your service really doing? While we write up a wonderful world in the annual report, we can only really know how well we are doing when someone outside comes and takes an honest, hard but fair look at what we are doing. What is the service really like for the service users? What do families really feel (they may not tell you as they may fear repercussions on their family member, even though you would never consider such a thing). How do staff really feel the service could improve? Is there agreement between all the stakeholders on the basic assumptions, principles and direction of the service? Has the service drifted from core values over time? Has the service become too beholden to government but you don't have the data to back this up? Staff at Include Pty Ltd have had over 15 years of experience in service evaluation, having evaluated day, residential, educational, work and recreational services for people with a disability and people who are ageing. Our evaluations start from the fundamental needs of the service users and then look at the coherence between the service principles; the service purpose, and the service processes to meet the needs of the service users. This almost always uncovers areas where the service is strong and coherent, and others where incoherence or inefficiencies are occurring. The evaluation report is confidential but will always be honest and direct. This may be uncomfortable for some agencies if issues are found that are at variance with the mission and values of the organisation. The evaluation is framed around an 'ideal' service so that clear directions are set for future growth, and recommendations are made for areas where he service is having difficulty. This evaluation service will be of most interest to agencies who have a strong desire to look hard at their procedures to achieve the highest quality means of meeting the needs of their service users. Costs will vary depending on the time involved and number of people interviewed, number of Include Staff employed on the evaluation and length of the report. Hence costs of evaluations are negotiated individually. For an idea of possible costs, click here.
A reality of working with people in human services is that fairly often, difficult behaviour is an issue. The typical means of dealing with this is to manage the behaviour (hence 'behaviour management'). For example, if a child is going out onto the street without permission, we are likely to lock the gate. This works fine until the gate is accidentally left open, or the child goes to a different area where there is no lock. The point is: Behaviour management often does not teach anything - it manages the behaviour. What is the alternative? Behaviour development. For the child who is going onto the road, an alternative is to teach him/her to stay within set boundaries. It is likely that this will take longer than behaviour management approaches, but once the behaviour is taught, it can be generalised to a range of different similar situations. This applies to all people at all ages -- one is never too old to learn. For aged people who have lived a full community life, skill maintenance may be a major issue which also benefits from this approach. If we think of any difficult behaviour that we encounter, there is an alternative (often incompatible) behaviour. The alternative to being aggressive is being friendly, helpful. The alternative to being noisy and disruptive is being quiet and cooperative. Of course on the way to teaching this new way of behaving we may need to manage the behaviour (e.g. lock the gate in the learning period of staying within set boundaries) and sometimes a clear line with consequences will have to be drawn. However, our approach is to focus strongly on the positive and developmental with the aim of the person building new ways of responding that are more positive and likely to assist in their inclusion in mainstream society. For approximate costs, click here. |
