Project Description:
Inclusion of family members and self-advocates as short-, medium-, and long-term fellows greatly enhances the education that AZLEND Fellows receive and expose them to a more personal experience with the cultural richness Arizona has to offer. AZLEND has achieved its overarching goal of including family/advocate perspectives across all aspects of the curriculum; however, additional infrastructure and supports are necessary to ensure that family/advocate fellows engage in the program and receive as much benefit from the program as they provide. Family/advocate fellows accepted into the program often have lower levels of educational attainment than do their peers and the content of the didactic seminars involves discussion of complex concepts in a limited amount of time. As we engage our fellows in seminars, projects and activities, we struggle with the challenge of ensuring a robustness of material and discussion, while simultaneously providing content that is accessible to all students. It is imperative that AZLEND develop a protocol for removing any barriers that family/advocate fellows perceive to their active engagement in all aspects of the AZLEND program. We need to provide the family/advocate fellows with a body of knowledge and supportive opportunities for experiences that will be transferable to the workforce, thus ensuring their place as future leaders in the community and actively engaging them in discussion with their peers to model the family-professional partnerships that occur in the field.
To address this need, we propose the following goal and objectives:
Goal: Develop a family didactic seminar and an educational toolbox of supplementary materials that will increase and support the engagement of family/advocate fellows.
Objective 1: Design a 3-hour seminar highlighting the family perspective facilitated by the family faculty member with assistance from family and advocate fellows to begin in Year 2015 -2016.
Objective 2: Create a strategic plan for development of an intake assessment and educational toolbox that mentors can use to increase content accessibility and improve fellow participation in AZLEND didactic seminars and related activities.
Keyword(s):
Inclusion, support
Core Function(s):
Training Trainees
Target Audience:
Students/Trainees (long or intermediate trainees), Community Trainees / Short term trainees, Family Members/Caregivers, Adults with Disabilities
Unserved or Under-served Populations:
Racial or Ethnic Minorities, Disadvantaged Circumstances, Geographic Areas, Empowerment Zone, Renewal Community, Reservation, Rural/Remote
Primary Target Audience Geographic Descriptor:
State
COVID-19 Related Data:
N/A
