|
LiveWorkPlay
For People With Intellectual Disabilities
Making A Buzz In The Ottawa Area Since 1995
"SUCCESS THROUGH COMMUNITY"
|
LiveWorkPlay: Our Staff & Their Work
   
|
|
The staff team: click on the names above to learn more about individual staff members!
|
|
STAFF VISIONING UPDATE: JUNE 11-15, 2007
This year's staff visioning was again a combination of professional development, discussion of findings from Visioning Day, and planning for the coming year. The team benefitted from a two-day workshop with Dr. David Burns, who was visiting Ottawa making for a terrific opportunity. The staff travelled to Montreal in 2006 for a different Burns workshop, and after a year of putting some of those ideas into practice it was both a valuable refresher and an introduction to some new ideas this time around. One staff member was even up on stage for several minutes to practice a counselling technique.
A few weeks earlier the team also had the opportunity to attend the international Social Roles Valorization conference which was held in Ottawa this year. Participation in that two-day event had a direct impact in that the simple concept of "A Good Life" came up several times in an SRV context, and may well prove to be the best initial answer in the search for a response to "What does LiveWorkPlay do for people with intellectual disabilities?"
STAFF VISIONING UPDATE: JUNE 12-16, 2006
The staff team spent an intense five days absorbing and reviewing information obtained on LiveWorkPlay Visioning Day. The surveys and notes were considered in light of the entire year for the purpose of looking forward to 2006-2007 and beyond. The team also conducted their own workshops, including technical learning related to manipulating images for graphical applications and using spreadsheets to work with survey data.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT UPDATE: MAY 11-12, 2006
It was an intense and exciting two days of learning for the staff team on May 11-12. They were in Montreal for a workshop "Scared Stiff: Fast Effective Treatment for Anxiety Disorders" with Dr. David Burns MD. LiveWorkPlay staff have been utilizing Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy (CBT) strategies since last August, and this seminar provided an opportunity to reflect on challenges and successes. The team also took advantage of the opportunity to have dinner with Dr. Burns and talk specifically about the work of LiveWorkPlay.
ANNOUNCEMENT: MAY 1, 2006
Today Jennifer Bosworth joins the team on a full-time basis as a SMILE facilitator. Jennifer was selected from a group of 30 candidates who applied for the position vacated by Allison Moores, who is now completing a full-time placement in a local hospital as part of her MSW requirements at Carleton University.
Former SMILE facilitator Fran Childs returns to LiveWorkPlay to coordinate the ACES summer learning program during summer break from her public school teaching duties. She will have help from Algonquin College student Anne-Marie Villeneuve, who has been hired as the ACES assistant for 2006.
ANNOUNCEMENT: AUGUST 2, 2005
LiveWorkPlay is pleased to announce the addition of Allison Moores to the staff team. Allison will be working at LWP on a part-time basis while she pursues graduate studies in Social Work at Carleton University.
Allison has been involved with the LiveWorkPlay community for the past two years in several capacities, most recently working with Fran Childs to support the ACES summer learning program. She has also been a volunteer on Friday nights and completed a successful academic placement that included supporting SMILE and involvement in LWP special events like the MBNA Recipe for Success charity auction and the Law Day Fun Run/Walk.
Allison begins her new role effective immediately, and will be supporting the SMILE camping trip as well as the SMILE-TNG trip to Montreal.
ANNOUNCEMENT: JULY 23, 2005
LiveWorkPlay is pleased to announce the addition of Grace Hudson to the full-time staff team. Grace is a well-known figure in the LiveWorkPlay community. She completed a successful student placement for her Social Work program in 2002-2003 and then accepted a position with the ACES summer learning program in 2003. For the past three years Grace has been volunteering on Friday nights in support of JOURNEYS and SMILE@NIGHT.
Ms. Hudson comes to LiveWorkPlay after a year with the Ottawa-Carleton Independent Living Centre as Empowerment and Skills Development Facilitator. She has a Social Work degree from Carleton University as well as a BA in Psychology from St. Thomas University.
Grace will be participating in staff visioning activities in August, and will start her new role at LiveWorkPlay in the first week of September with the resumption of the SMILE program. Welcome aboard!
Contact LiveWorkPlay staff by email or phone 613-235-9550
The team spent 3 days and 3 nights together preparing for a new season of programs in September 2005. Click here to read a summary of Staff Visioning Weekend 2005.
This is an incredibly dynamic organization, and job descriptions can change rapidly. What follows is an attempt to describe the work of our staff in general terms.
Keenan, Julie, Grace and Jennifer spend about 27 hours of their week working directly with clients as educators and facilitators in the SMILE system of supports.
There are currently about two dozen different learning opportunities at SMILE, and all four facilitators must be capable of delivering any and all of them. Every day offers an exciting, intensive, rewarding, and challenging environment. Exciting, because it is different every day; intensive because there is no down time; rewarding, because it is uplifting to see people changing and growing; and challenging, because it is an ambitious system of learning that is continuously pushing teacher and learner to excel.
Three hours per week from September to June, LiveWorkPlay staff combine with volunteers to form a larger team that supports Journeys and SMILE@night on Friday nights. An important role for the team is often to ensure the safety of participants during community outings while promoting participant-participant interaction, and to assist in navigating various community environments. Also included with these outings are three "family fun nights" that typically involve celebrations with a theme. Those events require extra planning, organization, and clean-up.
As a low estimate, about 15 hours per week from each full-time staff member goes into organizing and planning for all of the above. Preparing materials, coordinating efforts between staff members, conducting research, liaison with parents, revising schedules, meeting with partners, developing lesson plans, maintaining facilities, and any number of additional routine tasks. Sometimes this can consume several evenings in a row.
When all of that is done, it is time to tackle many "second jobs" at LiveWorkPlay. This consumes at least another 10 hours per week for full-time staff, and often a great deal more, depending on what is going on. Various major events throughout the year, such as the annual auction or New Year's Eve party, can add many more hours to the workload. There are always ongoing fundraising efforts which must be promoted and administered. There are computer networks to maintain. There are meetings to attend. There are various specialized tasks, such as financial tracking, grant-writing, project design, strategic planning, and more.
Many jobs require a committment that extends beyond the confines of a standard work week, and this is one of them. For LiveWorkPlay to be successful everyone in the LWP community has to give a little more, and our staff have a leadership role in demonstrating dedication to realizing the organization's mission through hard work and determination.
LiveWorkPlay also provides competitive employment supports to a variety of adult individuals under the auspices of the Ontario Disability Support Program Employment Supports. The process involved is somewhat complex, but on a basic level it entails meeting with people who want to work, getting to know them and helping them to develop a plan, exploring employment opportunities, delivering on the job supports in working towards and employment goal, and then withdrawing when the individual is positioned for long-term success.
Providing employemnt requires being on the road on a regular basis, visiting worksites to support or monitor clients, or meeting with employers to discuss opportunities or existing placements. The paperwork is often routine, but it never stops, and a great deal of discipline is required to stay up to date. There is a constant flow of official reports to the ODSP-ES office, as well as informal phone calls and emails. Sometimes plans need to change, and appropriate protocols must be followed to ensure that an opportunity is not lost because needed approvals were not obtained in a timely fashion.
This work offers significant professional challenges, because there are three parties that have put their faith into LiveWorkPlay's abilities: the client is relying on her support so they can end up with a job; the employer who is committing to providing the client an opportunity based in part on the plan that LWP has developed; and the ODSP-ES office is committing funds with the expectation of appropriate results. These pressures are simply part of the ordinary routine.
Although the amount of money flowing in and out of LWP is not about to impress the chartered banks, the sheer quantity of transactions can be mind-boggling. The regular staff team does their best to keep it all organized, but Treasurer Sean Malone plays a critical role in tying it all together for both formal and informal reporting purposes, leading up to the annual audit process. Every four-dollar block of cheese, every pad of copy paper, every ten dollar donation...it all has to be recorded and allocated appropriately. LiveWorkPlay is fortunate in that Sean has been with the organization for more than five years.
The ACES program typically involves hiring at least one additional full-time staff member each summer. The work can be fun because the activities are so interesting, but it is also a position of enormous responsibility, as safety is always a concern when dealing with younger people in community settings.
One of the serious issues affecting all organizations serving people with intellectual disabilities is staff turnover. The LiveWorkPlay co-founders have provided a steady presence for more than a decade, but finding and keeping other staff members has been difficult. It is hard work that demands a high degree of emotional maturity with limited financial rewards. You can help LiveWorkPlay and other organizations wtih future staff recruitment by speaking out about the importance of their work and the need for appropriate compensation and benefits.
Continue learning more about the organization:
|
Or switch to:
|
153 Chapel Street, Suite 300 | Ottawa, Ontario | K1N 1H5 | 613-235-9550
info@liveworkplay.ca | www.liveworkplay.ca
Charitable Registration 89622 2775 RR 0001
|
|
|
