Stephen Whan Visiting from Malparinka in Australia
15 Feb 2011 1 Comment
Stephen Whan from Australia plans to visit us in late April of 2011 as part of a learning tour on personalized supports. He is part of an organization called Milparinka.
Milparinka is currently going through a process of reorientating from group service to assisting people to have personalized and self directed supports. They have quite a few arrangements in place but they know they can do better. Stephen is going to visit agencies in the states that have been doing this effectively, successfully and sustainably for 20+ years.
After Stephen spoke to Frank Crupi (Milparinka CEO) and Michael Kendrick (consultant) it was decided that the best way for Stephen to learn the how’s, why’s etc of individualised service design and provision is through a series of causal conversations.
His starting point is
- What works?
- How to spread it?
- How to keep it going?
The how, who, what, where, when and why of individualised service design and provision from a number of perspectives. As OCL does personalized supports that include people going to college, volunteering in the community, with paid positions in community businesses and with living in their own home, there will be much for him to explore. Many people have been supported for years now, which will show the changes and flexibility that is needed to keep services thriving in the long haul for a person.
Stephen plans to meet and talk with some staff, family members, people that OCL supports, community members, housemates and maybe some state officials. It will help to give him a number of perspectives.
Kindale
01 Feb 2011 2 Comments
Pat had the nice opportunity to meet with staff from Kindale once again during her travels. Kindale is in the process of thinking about organizational change from group living and paid housemate support to that of life sharing. They asked Pat to talk a bit about OCL and the transition it made and then we did a brainstorming session to think out answers to many questions that they had. It is always tough when a change happens and there are always people who want the change and others who do not. The struggle is real. What is important is what the person who is paying for support wants and what we can do to make it happen. Many times it is the people we support that teach us the answers and paves the way for others to see what is possible.
Kindale is fortunate in that in British Columbia there are several other societies that have begun a transition. Of ones Pat knows about are Spectrum directed by Ernie, Susan and Aaron; NOCLS directed by Garry and two Kamloops Societies, one directed by Gail and the other by Bob. They all have the great potential of teaming up together to learn from one another as they all work towards true inclusion of the people who come to them for support.
