Programs, and how clients access services, have been evolving at the Yorkton branch of the Saskatchewan Abilities Council.
Monday a media roundtable was held to explain changes to the Day Program, changes made to provide the people the program supports with more choices, new opportunities and greater control.
“This is an exciting time for the Yorkton Branch because we’re going down a different path,” said Director John Denysek in a newsletter circulated at the roundtable. “We’ve worked through the initial fears and questions about moving towards a person-centred approach that focuses on community involvement, and we’re seeing more and more people discovering the possibilities—that’s creating tremendous momentum within the branch.”
Moving to a focus on community has meant taking a good look at branch services and programs and reflecting on how they fit with the evolving expectations of clients, parents and the community at large.
“This new approach is based on a person’s inherent rights—our mantra is ensuring that individuals with disabilities have more choices, more control and more opportunities. We don’t know what’s best for each individual, so we use person-centred planning to help individuals find out what’s best for them and then we structure activities and programs that enrich their lives,” he said.
It was a year ago the decision was made within the Day Program, first launched in 1966, that if the Abilities Centre were going to truly support individuals in the community, changes to the way services were organized and delivered were required so that individuals had more choices, control and opportunities in their lives, explained John Denysek, Regional Director at the Yorkton Branch.
A year later, they have a program where the individuals they support are happier and our community is becoming more inclusive, he said.
“The decision to change was based on the needs and desires of individuals we were supporting, the changing expectations within society, and the desire to move from the charity model of service to the citizenship model of service,” detailed material circulated at the roundtable. “We were seeing increasing referral rates to our community based programs such as the Transitioning Youth to Employment Program while decreasing referral rates to the Day Program. While we had been offering a wide array of community based activities through our Day Program for a number of years, we were not supporting individuals to ingrain them into everyday community life. We would take a group of people from our facility, do something in the community then come back to our facility. Our ability to facilitate one on one supports was limited. We had to change if we wanted to remain relevant to the people we support and the community we serve.”
Denysek said the changes are at their heart, client driven.
“The people who we support are the experts,” he said simply. “… They’re experts at knowing what’s best for them.”
The new approach is to find what the strengths and goals of an individual client are, and then work with community organizations and businesses to create a situation where they can achieve their goals, offered Denysek.
“Everyone has a unique gift,” he said, adding they want to create individual programs to allow them to contribute those gifts to the broader community.
The process of change started with the definition of community which was crafted by Ed Margason and reported in Creating Community Anywhere: Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World by Carolyn R. Shaffer and Kristin Anundsen (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1993);
“Communities are places or entities where members can give something, where they can contribute something that they feel especially able to give, something they are good at. The gift from each member is valued by the whole community and all gifts are unique and individual. The gift that the community gives back to each member is that of a role and a connection.”
The changes to programming extended to the Sask Abilities Training Centre, which is being transitioned out.
Seven part-time jobs for former Training Centre clients have been found, with four additional positions targeted for the future. The jobs provide a competitive wage and the clients are considered Council employees—but most of them also participate in other Council programs, so they remain clients.
Transitioning Training Centre clients to community-based employment and volunteer opportunities is a major step forward in the shift that is happening at the Yorkton Branch, but it is just the beginning. Denysek hopes to see the branch evolve into a community centre, where community volunteers interact with clients in facility-based programs and where community groups gather for meetings and events.
When the shift to community inclusion was announced in 2015, there were 21 participants in the Training Centre. Originally, the plan was to transition eight participants every three or four months until the end of 2017. Today, just a year after the new model was announced, only four clients remain.
“The transition has happened much more quickly than we originally thought,” said Denysek. He attributes this success to the focus on person-centred planning. “Supporting individuals in the community is our mantra. The person-centred plan is the key to giving individuals more choices, more control and more opportunities.”
Many clients had been at the Training Centre for 15 and 20 years, and some are approaching retirement age. When added to a decline in contracts, it became clear that it was time to do something different. In April 2015, the branch announced it would phase out the Training Centre. There were concerns, especially amongst participants. “We assured each participant that we were here to support them, and that we would only go as fast or as slow as they wanted,” said Aleks Hoeber, Yorkton Branch Program Manager in s release. “We began by doing a person-centred plan with each individual in the Training Centre to identify their interests, strengths, goals and wishes.”
“In recent years, we’ve been seeing a large decrease in people transitioning from high school to our Training Centre and a large increase in people enrolling in our Transitioning Youth to Employment (TYE) program,” said Hoeber. “In speaking with young people, parents, teachers and schools, we found that expectations had changed. Parents today are looking for equal opportunities for community-based employment and other opportunities for their children.”
Hoeber said it had been expected to take some time to find community partners to satisfy the needs of diverse clients, but said the process has gone well.
“It didn’t take very long,” she said, adding through recreational opportunities, volunteer spots and employment opportunities, most clients have found community partners.
Hoeber said the new approach has created a more “inclusive” programming base.
To assist with the transition, the branch hired a Community Inclusion Specialist and an in-house Employment Specialist. The Community Inclusion Specialist is helping clients access supported volunteer opportunities in the community, with very encouraging results. Former Training Centre clients are now volunteering with over 18 community-based charities and non-profit organizations, from the Soup Haven Lunch Program and Meals on Wheels, to the MS Walk and SPCA Pet Adoption events, to the Salvation Army and United Way, to retirement homes and daycares.
The Community Inclusion Specialist is also recruiting mutual mentors—community members interested in creating a friendship with an individual with disabilities. It’s a reciprocal relationship based on mutual interests that enriches the lives of both participants.
The in-house Employment Specialist helps find part-time community-based work experiences, provides life and job skill development, and organizes job readiness and job maintenance clubs where clients can share their experiences.
