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Essential Lifestyle Planning Training

Essential Lifestyle Planning (ELP) is a guided process for learning how someone wants to live and for developing a plan to help make it happen.

An Essential Lifestyle Plan is a type of person-centred plan that is useful in:

·         Discovering what is important to a person in everyday life

·         Identifying what support the person requires and any issues of health or safety (from the perspective of the person)

·         Describing what you have learned in a way that is easily understood by those who will enable the person to get what is important to them

 CQL Canada offers the following workshops as part of its Person Centred Thinking Program.

Person Centred Thinking

Coaches Training

Facilitator Training

People Planning Together

Families Planning Together

Planning with Parents

Person Centred Thinking – 2 days

This 2 day foundational workshop is for all people who support others who live with a disability.  Implementation and ongoing support of person-centred plans and services is more likely where staff have participated in this training.  The training is designed and recommended for all paid staff - regardless of their role.  Managers need to attend if they want those doing the direct support to use the skills learned.

The training in person centered thinking is recommended for all paid staff regardless of their role.  It serves as a foundation for everyone who is involved in supporting people with significant disabilities.  Implementation of person centered plans is more likely where staff have participated in this training.

This training consists of 2 days of exercises where the participants acquire basic skills in person centred thinking such as -

• The importance of being listened to and the effects of having no positive control

• The role of daily rituals and routines

• How to discover what is important to people

• How to sort what is important for people from what is important to them

• How to respectfully address significant issues of health or safety while supporting choice

• How to develop goals that help people get more of what is important to them while addressing issues of health and safety

Day One:  The focus of this day of learning is to provide participants instruction and ample practice in the processes and structures used to develop plans that support choice while addressing issues of health and safety. This day of activities relies on group work and discussion.  Through a series of applied stories and guided exercises, participants practice sorting information using the following frameworks:

• What is important to a person and what is important for a person

• Core responsibilities for those who provide support; when judgment and creativity is expected; what is outside the responsibility of paid staff

• What makes sense and what doesn’t make sense, and recording this information from a variety of perspectives

• Aspects to consider when matching people who receive supports with people who provide supports

Day Two:  The focus of this day is to provide instruction regarding key principles of person centered thinking as applied through essential lifestyle planning. Participants develop their skills in person centered thinking through a series of guided exercises, done in pairs with a fellow participant.  Through directed conversation, listening and sorting information, and writing down what they have learned about their partner, participants practice skills required when developing ELPs.  At the end of the day participants have a first plan that they have done on themselves.

This training is not about learning to write plans.  It is about learning the skills and tools that enable the supporter to listen/hear in a new way that results in the person supported getting the life he or she wants.  Participants in this program learn to listen differently, record what they're learning and build a person centred description of how the individual wants to live.  This training complements the Personal Outcome Measures^® tool in that it provides a good foundation for planning.

FORMAT:

      ●    Presentation and group exercises

      ●    Maximum of 40 participants

WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE:

      ●   Direct Support Staff, Board Members, Executive Directors, Directors, Managers, Clinical Staff,

           Family Members, Service Users

Coaches Training

(Prerequisite – Person Centred Thinking)

A 1 day workshop that is ideally held 6 to 8 weeks after the initial Person Centred Thinking workshop but it is often added on as a third day to the Person Centred Thinking workshop. Targeted for those who have attended Person Centred Thinking and who “got it”.  Certainly all senior staff (including ED) should attend and plan to be coaches.  This training creates a Coaches Team, with an ongoing support plan for that team, who are able to coach/mentor their colleagues in the use and learning of the person centred thinking skills and tools learned in the PC Thinking workshop. We’ve found it’s only through the presence of these committed coaches that we can expect the learning of the PC Thinking workshop to become habit and begin to change peoples’ lives.

The coaches day will assist participants to:

• determine where they are now in terms of their workplace being person centered;

• consider ways the use of the skills/tools can move them forward;

• learn how to be a coach to their colleagues;

• plan an ongoing coaching program; and

• plan an ongoing support environment for the coaches team

FORMAT:

      ●    Presentation and group exercises

      ●    Maximum of 15 participants

Facilitator Training

Two days of training ideally held 6 - 8 months after the initial Person Centred Thinking training and after the Coaches Team has begun its work.  This training is for those who are actively using the tools and skills from Person Centred Thinking and are now ready to go beyond building person centred living descriptions to writing full plans with people who receive support.  These plans include all areas of the Person Centred Living description and go beyond to include action planning.  The training teaches participants to: gather information from a person receiving support and their personal network; organize/synthesize this information into a plan for how the person wants to live; learn about what needs to change and what needs to stay the same in the person's life; and build action plans to insure that change happens where needed and that those things that need to stay the same are maintained.

The trainer is assisted in this workshop by a co-trainer recruited and paid by the agency.  The co-trainer is a person who receives support.  Normally this co-trainer is accompanied by family members and 2-3 staff who know him/her well.  By the end of the training the participants have built a full Essential Lifestyle Plan for the co-trainer.

People Planning Together

In this extremely powerful 2 day workshop trained self advocates teach other self advocates to write their own person centred plans.  The trainers are supported by a trained facilitator who initially teaches them to do their job and then backs out and offers only support as needed.  Participants in this workshop who are unable to read and/or write are usually supported by either a friend or a paid staff.  However, everyone at the workshop is expected to write their own plan or they're not allowed to be present.

People who attend this workshop find it very affirming and a great esteem builder.  In addition, they find their plans actually get acted on since they become the primary advocate of making sure this happens.

Families Planning Together

This 2 days of training can be delivered over two separate Saturdays, over 4 week nights, or any other similar configuration that is suitable for the families attending.  It is best for families of children with disabilities and is very effective when families are planning for transition.  The families are taught and supported to gather information about their loved one and capture it into a plan that, if used by supporters (i.e.: the school system, an agency, respite providers, etc.), insure the knowledge of the families is honoured and built on over time.  The action planning portion enables the family to figure out how to address the specific areas where things need to change.

Planning with Parents Workshop

The interactive one day workshop, which is geared to parents, will provide information about what “should” and “can be” expected from services/agencies with respect to planning to ensure that their son or daughter receives the “right” supports.

Parents will learn to use some tools from Essential Lifestyle Planning with an emphasis on the Personal Outcome Measures^®.  These tools will be used to gather important information about their son or daughter.  They will also learn how to put these tools and skills learned together to develop an action plan based on the information gathered – all to the benefit of their child, themselves as parents, and to the agency in terms of providing the best possible supports and services to their child.

Format:

Some group work

Lots of opportunities for questions and discussions

CQL Canada's Person Centred Thinking Trainers

Hilary Tugwood

Hilary Tugwood has been a Trainer/Reviewer for CQL Canada since 2002.  She is certified in Personal Outcome Measures^® for Adults, as well as Personal Outcome Measures^® for Children and Youth.  Hilary is also a facilitator in Essential Lifestyle Planning, Person Centred Thinking.

She has been a Reviewer on several agency reviews using both the Quality Measures 2005 and the Personal Outcome Measures^® 2000 here in Canada and in the United States.

She has extensive experience facilitating Self Assessment Workshops and one day Training Sessions; she has provided Rights Training for both staff and people who receive support, and reviewed organizational systems and assurances.  Hilary has facilitated Person Centred Thinking workshops in Manitoba as well as Ontario.

Hilary has a B.A. in Psychology and Human Development from the University of Guelph and has over 18 years of experience in the developmental disabilities field, working with children and families as well as with adults.  She has a personal philosophy in human services that is based on respecting the dignity and rights of all people.

Hilary is currently the Director of Accreditation at Plainfield Community Homes in Belleville, Ontario.

Paul Wheeler

Paul is executive director of Semiahmoo House Society, a Surrey/White Rock, British Columbia, based provider of support and advocacy for individuals and families affected by disabilities. Paul is also an ELP mentor/trainer with CQL Canada.

Originally trained as a social worker, he has been involved in the provision of social services through not for profit organizations for 30 years.  One of the key concerns of Paul’s professional life is developing methods of assisting employees to clearly understand, support and respond to the needs, desires and dreams of individuals/families.  Paul trains others to use the Essential Lifestyle Planning (ELP) model of person centered planning, which was developed by Michael Smull and the ELP Learning Community.  ELP is a guided process for learning how someone wants to live and for developing a plan to help make that happen.  Paul has supported people around British Columbia to learn and use this model.