Anne's Story
I recently joined Parent to parent Association Queensland Inc at the Yandina office, and was immediately invited to attend the Workshop on Person Centred Practice. This was all new to me so I just turned up with no expectations and open to receive what information I could acquire to help me with my son who is 10 and has Down syndrome.
Well, I was so impressed by the presenter Michelle Livesley, from Helen Sanderson and Associates in England. Her visual presentation and group activity style was just fantastic. She had my attention the whole time with her beautiful English accent and her professional and organized presentations with clear visual support from the Agenda, the group activities implementing blue sky thinking, through to objectives and results we wanted to achieve. Michelle displayed a clear path of information which I could take in. There was a wide range of participants being parents and professional organizations responsible for carers. I felt the information was related to us and met individual needs, for our children or staff.
I was so excited about the information that I came back for the third day on Friday as I originally was invited for two days. I felt totally relaxed and able to contribute and so did all the other participants. Some were parents and others were professional employed people. So there was a different prospective to discuss and learn throughout the workshops.
My first day was on Community Connections and this was followed by a second day on the topic. The tools presented were on what is in the community and what does the community mean to me. The purpose was to see, try and reflect on tools and exercises which help us to support people to make connections and friendships in the community.
I felt equipped to use the tools following the course with exercises like the community mapping and capacity mapping, and staff matching. Another strategy was a hand out of the star exercise, about hopes and dreams.
The third day was to explore risk using person-centred approaches to help people to achieve the changes they want to see while keeping risk in perspective. We looked at how does your organisation manage risk now? Then ways to spend more time defining the problem so that the solution is evident, simple but important research.
Since the workshops Parent to Parent has helped me write a plan for my son’s future, with actions that I am now putting in place. Next week I am attending another workshop on Person Centred Thinking, I just want to know more.