Optimal Individualised Service Design - A two week intensive Leadership Event in February and March 2017
Two Weeks
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Description
Optimal Individualised Service Design or OISD (sometimes called ‘Deep Quality’) is a two week intensive leadership level course. It is recognised in many countries as the premier leadership event in terms of operationalising individualised service options. It has been designed and developed by Dr Michael Kendrick and delivered more than 70 times around the globe
Venue: Tauranga Yacht Club
Dates: Week One: February 13 – 17
Week Two: March 6 – 10
NZDSN have partnered with Imagine Better as course hosts to offer our provider network 5 places on this premier training event. Course costs will be heavily subsidised through the NZDSN Provider Development Programme.
This will enable two things to happen:
- Course fees for providers will only be $500 per individual for each of the five available places
- The subsidy offered, through the NZDSN Provider Development Programme, will enable Imagine Better to offer a further 5 “fees free” places to disabled people and family members
It is therefore an opportunity for organisations to access a high quality leadership development training event at an affordable rate; and in doing so provide disabled people and family members the same opportunity to participate in leadership development.
The course is very intensive and is aimed at promising and emerging leaders. NZDSN is particularly interested in hearing from Maori and Pasifika staff and from staff with lived experience of disability.
This is to reflect the recommendations in our recent Workforce Report about the need to grow leadership in these areas.
Applicants should apply directly via email to admin@nzdsn.org.nz and include a comprehensive reference from their employing organisation.
Applications should be received by December 22nd 2016.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Prospective applicants and their referees should carefully read the following course outline as it is important to understand the significant commitments involved. There is a contact person at the end of this outline to make further inquiries about the nature of the course.
Course Outline: Optimal Individual Service Design (OISD)
As its name suggests, this course has been created to teach participants (and enable practical application of learning) how to create a coherent and functional service for and with an individual. It takes a blank page approach and then walks through coherent service design with theory and practice. Participants work in groups of three or four around a focus person (an individual with impairment and or their family / whanau) to create a good life and articulate in detail the steps, approaches, strategies, personnel and resourcing that will be required to create the life.
The course is divided into two parts of five days each. The first five-day session will be 13 – 17 February and the second will be 6 – 10 April. The course will be quite intensive and demanding for the participant, as each participant will be expected to work in a very concentrated and rigorous manner. There will be evening work of one kind or another, including reading, group work, community visits and other such activities. This is usually three nights of each week Participants in the course will also have to do a small amount of writing as a team both during and after the course in relation to formalizing their proposal work into a final brief summary document. This will likely only involve a total of several pages per person on a team.
Why Is This Intensive Training Needed?
This specialized training is needed because of the difficulty being faced within many service organizations, and by funding authorities, in being able to respond with a coherent programme to the many increasing demands that there be individualized service options made available to people that are:
- Largely under the control of individuals and their families
- Designed with the individual and their family “from the ground up”
- Innovative
- Effective
- Affordable
- Easily brought on stream and managed by conventional organisations
- Able to serve persons thought to be “extreme” or “difficult to serve”
- Personalized in their address of needs
- Utilizing an appropriate balance of natural and paid supports
Who Is This Intensive Training Course For?
This intensive program of training is designed for the most able and promising of staff, consumers, families, managers and professionals. The participant can expect to participate directly and indirectly in the development of actual service models from the beginning. This will involve intensive analytic and development work, and can be quite demanding for individuals who are unused to having their work closely scrutinized and publicly evaluated. It will also require that the person be capable of returning home after the event and be able to take on significantly difficult service design tasks and complete them successfully. Naturally, persons with extensive and credible familiarity with the needs, perspectives and challenges facing consumers and families will have an easier time with this course. People unable to readily work outside the confines of conventional service models and bureaucratic systems will probably find this course much too difficult as it requires the participant to imagine arrangements that might well be novel and unprecedented and therefore difficult to negotiate into existence and regular operation.
Due to the intensity of the event, the inherent challenges of the task, and the cost to both participants and sponsoring organizations, it is normally recommended that only the most able be supported to attend. This does not mean, however, that promising novices cannot attend, as this event will provide sound preparation for good quality long- term contributions. Rather, it is to caution people to be very selective in supporting attendance to ensure that the event is a good match for prospective participants. Of particular importance will be the capacity of the individual to understand people and their needs, and to maintain a disciplined focus as to what will actually meet those needs.
What Are The Limits Of The Course?
This course is timely as it addresses the technical and human foundations that constitute the core capacities that need to be present if unique individualized options are to more routinely be developed and available to people seeking them. It is clearly not enough to speak of this at the level of rhetoric, yet fail to generate the actual options that live up to this promise.
No short two-week course can properly prepare people for the many challenges involved in optimal individual service design. Prowess with this task can only come through continual practice and learning from the errors, failures, surprises and enigmas that come with trying to be faithful to individual people and their lives. While a short course can help with this process, it is better seen as an initial orientation to the issues involved. The issues are ever-present, and will be routinely revisited in endlessly unexpected ways.
It is also quite probable that the participants may return to service settings in which only a modest amount of moral and organizational support presently exists for many aspects of desirable practice. Conceivably, training of this kind may actually heighten these challenges, and the difficulties that come with them. This is to be expected given that many service providing organizations are finding it quite a struggle to change the way they provide services.
It is also true that individual participants each have their own strengths and limits, and they may consequently vary in the degree to which they are “suited” to this kind of work, particularly at this stage in history. No course can make up for what individuals lack, though it can be expected to build on what they bring. This should be taken as a caution to give some thought as to who should be selected to attend this course, as there clearly will be individuals for whom the course is a better match.
Getting Your Individual Questions Answered Prior To Beginning The Course
As can be expected, a given person considering participating in the course may have any number of questions that will help them decide whether to attend. To make this easy we are providing you with contact people that you can reach in advance and have your questions dealt with both confidentially and uniquely. We encourage you to make this contact, as it is an essential process in ensuring that the course is the right one for people. It is also a crucial way in which potential participants can make their own unique needs known to us as it relates to their ability to fully and satisfactorily participate. It may not always be possible for the course to easily accommodate to the individual needs of participants, but it is important for us to at least attempt to take these into account and see what might be possible. Naturally, the earlier we are made aware of these needs the better.
The course is being hosted by Imagine Better. They are responsible for any logistical and organisational issues related to the course. The contact person is:
Tony McLean
07 281 1732 or 027 493 4601
Tony.McLean@imaginebetter.co.nz
Prerequisites
Course applicants will be required to undertake both weeks of the course
