Course Description
In this course, students will explore practical strategies for enhancing citizenship and belonging for persons with disabilities through person centred processes and community building techniques. Students will learn how to identify and obtain crucial information for planning from individuals and their support networks, while learning to differentiate, choose, and evaluate the right methods and supports. Emphasis is placed on understanding planning as a dynamic process intricately linked to building and sustaining relationships in community.
Course Content
The following global ideas guide the design and delivery of this course:
- The hard work of community building begins by revisioning community as a place where all people are valued and appreciated for their gifts.
- Increasingly, there is an interest in the field of disability support in an alternative way of viewing community and community support. The new vision is capacity focused, concentrating on the assets of community rather than its lists of needs. It is believed that practitioners benefit from a critical understanding of community development which focuses on building from the strength and capacity of individuals, families and neighbourhoods. This knowledge provides students with a deeper understanding of community and gives them new tools to facilitate inclusion and identify opportunities for real contribution.
- The social isolation of people with disabilities is a growing concern amongst advocates and professionals. The professional world of disability support has moved people out of institutions but now faces the next challenge of facilitating ordinary relationhips and friendships within the community. It appears that a next step might be to better understand some of the inherent structural barriers that exist within our systems of care, which may compromise the development of these ordinary relationships and lead to isolation.
Means of Assessment
This course will conform to Douglas College policy regarding the number and weighting of evaluations. Typical means of evaluation would include a combination of:
- Community inventory
- Major paper on facilitation strategies
- Circle of support analysis
- Classroom participation self assessment
- Story telling
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. Reflect upon the principles of person centred thinking in achieving citizenship and quality of life
- Articulate the connections between individuals, community and quality of life.
- Compare and contrast the benefits and drawback of community experience for people who live within a service system and those that do not.
- Examine the historical progression of Person Centred Planning methods and what the issues are for individuals, families, organizations and communities who try to implement them.
2. Examine Person Centred Planning Approaches
- Explore strategies for increasing practitioner sensitivity, while enhancing an individual's participation and involvement in planning, including enhanced communication, use of multi-media, and graphic recording
- Demonstrate strategies used in a variety of PCP methods that enhance personalization and effectiveness of implementation, including facilitation
- Compare and contrast the context in which PCP planning approaches are applicable and relevant (such as Discovery, Essential Life Style Planning, PATH/MAP, etc)
- Create personal profiles which reflect thoughtful observation and inquiry
- Recognize the potential areas for competing values
3. Plan, develop and evaluate effective strategies for building community presence and contribution.
- Explore the theoretical framework of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) and its relationship to person-centred plans.
- Explore practitioner roles in community building, including community connectors, navigators, transition planners, etc
- Demonstrate strategies used to connect individuals with community in socially relevant ways.
- Articulate the opportunities and barriers with ABCD
- Articulate the importance of knowing and understanding the person who is being supported
- Recognize the potential areas for competing values
- Describe how teams and groups work to facilitate, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of person centred plans, while building bridges in community.