Person-Centered Practices (PCP) Institute
| TX-Texas Center for Disability Studies, UCEDD/LEND | |||
| Program Type | UCEDD | Fiscal Year | 2012 |
| Contact | Shelley Dumas, Ph.D. | ||
| [email protected] | |||
| Phone | 512-232-0744 | ||
| Project Description | |||
|
In collaboration with the Center on Disability and Development at Texas A&M University, provide training on person-centered thinking and planning practices to individuals with disabilities, family members, educators, human services staff, community providers and crisis case managers through the Institute on Person Centered Practices (IPCP). Texans with disabilities have increased opportunities to live in their communities. Providers of community services are finding creative ways to leverage Money Follows the Person funds to close private ICF-MR facilities. Educators are interested in learning creative methods to support students to transition to community from public school. Family members are looking for strategies to discover information that will support their loved ones to have a better life in community. And with the post ADA generation emerging, people with disabilities are advocating to live their lives as they define them. These factors lead to the continual need to provide a wide range of training on person centered approaches to support people with disabilities to live lives based on preferences and independent goals. To address these training needs, the IPCP, a collaborative partnership between the Center on Disability and Development at Texas A&M University and the Center for Disability Studies at the University of Texas at Austin has completed its second year. The purpose of the institute remains to provide training on Person Centered Practices and Person Centered Plan Facilitation for people with disabilities, families, educators and other professionals to support people with disabilities to live valued lives in their communities. The Institute maintains a close affiliation with the Learning Community for Person Centered Practices, an international organization with training initiatives in the United States, Canada, England and Australia. The IPCP is Co-managed by the two UCEDD Directors (Dr. Penny Seay at UT Austin and Dr. Mike Benz TAMU) and includes training staff from both Centers: Dr. Shelley Dumas, Laura Buckner (UT) and Jeff Garrison-Tate (TAMU). All training staff is certified through The Learning Community. Dr. Dumas and Ms. Buckner are also Mentor Trainers through The Learning Community. A Mentor Trainer is authorized to certify additional Trainers through The Leaning Community. During this reporting period, IPCP staff focused on three general goals: 1. Develop infrastructure to enable the Institute to be a self sustaining entity. 2. Build capacity to be able to Take it Scale by recruiting highly skilled trainers as IPCP Associates, training, certifying trainers with a broad organizational impact and continued development of relationships/partnerships to offer training and support on Person Centered Practices. 3. Begin to plan for a region wide learning conference that could include Certified Trainers and interested people from other states in the southwest region. During the year, the IPCP added three Associates in response to demand for training and to initiate training opportunities to a broader range of audiences. Sheryl Baker is the Chief Operating Officer for American Habilitation Services a statewide provider of community services and brings exceptional skills as an organizational strategic planner, Debbie Wilkes brings a wealth of expertise as a leader in transition supports for students with disabilities leaving public schools and Vickie Mitchell who adds a skill set and life work of supporting organization change with school administration. This expanded team is in the process of developing training guides based on Person Centered Thinking Tools from The Learning Community specific to their area of expertise to be applied their audience. A key goal that has emerged from the Institute is to take these practices to scale by embedding the practices in the fabric numerous organizations who serve people with disabilities and their families. The Institute has initiated additional activity in an effort to Take it to Scale. This includes actively developing and mentoring Certified Trainers through a partnership with a community provider network: Provider Association of Community Services in Texas (PACSTx) to mentor 4 key training management staff from three statewide providers. In addition, the Institute has provided extensive training in partnership with the UCEDD at the University of Oklahoma to mentor 4 people to Certified Trainers. The Institute entered into a contract with the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to provide training for Adult Protective Services Case Workers in nine regions in Texas. Additional training has been conducted for families, people with disabilities and advocates hosted by non-profit coalitions in Houston and Ft. Worth. The Institute in partnership with American Habilitation Services (AHS), a large statewide community services provider conducted training for the majority of their employees mostly direct support staff in an effort to shift the organization to be centered in person centered practices. The Institute mentored two key managers with AHS to become Certified Trainers and provided additional intensive ?Coaches? training for direct support staff to embed the practices in the day to day operations of the organization. IPCP also worked closely with the Hogg foundation to provider training to the leadership at two State Supported Living Centers. The heart and foundation of the training continues to be Person Centered Thinking and Plan Facilitation Training. In this reporting period IPCP staff provided 44 presentations and training workshops to a total 978 individuals, including people with disabilities, family members, professionals from state and regional agencies, educators, private providers of community services, adult protective services case workers, and advocates. A total 425 participants completed satisfaction surveys on the training events for which IPCP staff were the lead. Overall, participants were very satisfied with the training they received: 92% of participants reported being satisfied or highly satisfied with their training. |
|||
