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For 19 years she has worked as psychologist at The Institute for The Blind and Partially Sighted in Denmark.
In periods she also has been supervisor on other institutions for visually handicapped.
For 5 years she has been
co-editor on "VISUS", Scandinavian Magazine for educators of visually impaired.
Contents:
1. Presentation of the topic.
2. Purpose of the course.
3. Payment for the course.
4. Description of the participants.
5. The staff.
6. The model of the course.
7. Schedule.
8. Overview of the sequence of the course.
9. Elaboration of the overview.
10. The participants' benefit from the course.
11. The staff members' situation.
12. The future plans for The Future Workshop.
13. Summary.
2.
1. Presentation of the topic.
At The Institute for The Blind and Partially Sighted in Denmark we offeres counselling, consultancy and many kind of courses for visually impaired young people and adults.
It is one of our courses called "The Future Workshop" I will have the pleasure to tell you about.
The first course of this
type started in August 1991. It is a fulltime course
over 18 weeks for minimum
5 to maximum 10 visually impaired young people per course. We have 2 courses
every year, and we have just finished our 12th course in June.
I think that we now have gained so much experience from this type of course that I would like to tell about it and discuss it with colleagues working in the same field - hopefully for mutual inspiration!
2. What is the purpose of the course?
The course is a pre-rehabilitation-course
with the aim to clarify if the
participant wishes and has
the nessesary ressources to go through an education, take a job, or the
best solution will be an early retirement
pension with time and energy
to hobbies, family etc.
The overriding purpose is
that each and every participant finishes the course with a realistic and
satisfying plan for the future which the participant
himself has developed in
collaboration with the staff and the fellow-
participants.
3. Payment of the course.
The municipality and the
county where the participant lives each pay half
the expenses to the course.
4. Description of the participants.
Common for most of the participants
at the beginning of the course is that
they have serious doubts
about their future. Which education to choose? What is suitable for visually
handicapped persons? What is suitable for me? These are typical questions.
Some have already given up on a job or an education and they are quite
disillusioned and have a very poor
selfconfidence.
3.
The participants in figures:
Number of participants so far 76
Women 30
Men 46
Age distribution:
Under 20 number of persons
14
20 - 29 number of persons
31
30 - 39 number of persons
26
40 - 49 number of persons
5
Total 76
Totally blind number of persons
16
Partially sighted 60
5. The staff.
We are an enthusiastic group
of 12 persons:
Teachers of various educations,
secretary, social worker and psychologist.
6. The model of the course.
At our Institute we have
not invented The Future Workshop model. It has
been used before for instance
on weekend courses for imployees in various
organizations.
We have developed the model so that it fits our purpose.
When the individual participants
start their course it is important to us to
help them to develop a group
which is secure, inspiring and nice to be a
part of. It is a necessity
in order to work with the individuals in the group. This work mostly takes
place in The Future Workshop hours which are run by a social worker and
me as a psychologist once a week 2-3 hours or more if needed.
We work on several alternative
levels:
Rational / Analytic.
Intuitive / Emotional.
Event oriented -
and we shift between the
following phases in the social groupwork.
4.
1) Phase of criticism.
2) Phase of phantasy.
3) Phase of reality.
"The red thread" through
the course is "choise" and "clarification" and all
staff-members are very aware
of that.
The Future Workshop hours.
In phase 1 - "Phase of criticism"
- we try to make each of the group members aware of his or hers strong
and weak sides. What is working good in my life and what is trouble - and
what is my part of it?
What would I like to change
- in me, in my life and how?
In phase 2 - "Phase of phantasy".
Here we try through plays
and phantasy-plays to catch sight of new possibilities and ways to go for
each individual in the group. We use phantasy-travelling several times
during the course.
To gentle music the group
is guided by my colleague or by me backwards or forwards in time perhaps
with a magic wand in order to get ideas to what
they really want.
The participants have this
way found the courage to tell what they always
wanted to be. One, for instance,
wanted to be a long-distance truckdriver.
The whole group, the social
worker and I analysed this dream in order to find out what it contained.
1. Is it a wish to travel, all the time experiencing something new?
2. See other countries?
3. Love of adventure?
4. Managing a large machine?
5. Love of technology?
6. Being your own master?
7. Working independent?
8. Having a mans work?
Etc., etc.....
As a visually handicapped
person you of course cannot be a truckdriver, but maybe you can carry out
some of the needs lying behind it in another job, feasible for you as a
visually handicapped person.
5.
This analyse is the beginnning
of phase 3 - "Phase of reality".
Through out the course the reality-phase takes more and more space because our goal is to make a realistic plan for the future for everyone.
7. The Schedule.
A typically schedule for a Future Workshop participant can look like this:
Time Number Monday Tuesday
Wednesday Thursday Friday
8.00-
8.45 1. Sound Studio
8.55-
9.40 2. Future Workshop "
ADL "Food, body & clothes"
9.55-
10.40 3. " Gymnastics EDB
Music "
10.50-
11.35 4. " " EDB " Journey
preparing + project
12.20-
13.05 5. Study technique
Journey preparing + project Study technique Gymnastics "
13.15-
14.00 6. " " " " Evaluation
of the week
14.15-
15.00 7. Music Hobby wood
& metal Mobility EDB
15.10-
15.55 8. " Workshop " "
The schedules are to a certain
extent different because some of the
subjects are optional.
6.
8. Overview of the sequence
of the course.
Week:
1: Introduction to The Institute
and the course, birth of the group.
2-7: Working period including
miniproject and preparing for a journey
and for "The quest teachers
weeks".
8: Journey.
9: Evaluation of the journey and adjusting the rest of the course to our new experiences.
10-12: Guest teachers weeks and projectmaking.
13-16: Projectmaking and
presenting the growing plan for family and
municipality. Eventually
visiting feasible educationcenters or working
places.
17-18: Presenting projects.
Finishing plans.
Evaluation and conclusion.
9. Elaboration of the overview.
Week 1:
In order to develop a group
of the new participants as fast as possible we
make a lot of the first
week.
Besides a full day program
we arrange one evening in town for the group and half the staff. Another
evening for the group and the other half of the staff in the living department
of The Institute, where the participants
from outside town stay during
the course.
Most of the first week we
have a guest teacher with us. It is a blind man
who has been partially sighted
and the group learn from his extensive
experience with choises
concerning educations and life goals which he frankly tells about. By doing
that he may serve as a model for the group and helps the participants overcoming
shyness.
Week 2-7:
We plan a journey together,
decide destination in agreement with the
budget and as much as possible
of the practical planning for the journey
is performed by the participants.
Besides they make a litte project about a subject of special interest to themselves in connection with the journey. The project also is a training of sight-compensating methods which the partcipant is not yet familiar with.
7.
And why do we make the journey?
In order to give the participants
and the staff - represented by 3-4 staff
members by turns - some
common experiences and to investigate the participants capacities and problems
in this unfamiliar situation.
Week 8:
Our journeys have among
others brought us to England, Norway and Greece. What do we see on the
journey?
For instance .....
... A participant who keeps
calm in unfamiliar and confusing situations.
... Another participant
who is talented in currency-calculation and account making.
... Or one who uses her
limited eyesight optimal.
... Or we see problems we
weren't aware of at home, for instance a participant who is a diabetic
who forgets to take insulin, doesn't eat
properly or places the responsibility
for the diabetic on the staff
members.
... Or one who seems secure
and mobility competent at home now
being very insecure and
nervous, not going anywhere at all without a staff member right beside.
Everything leeds to important discussions and fruitful acknowledgement on and after the journey.
We bring tape recorders with
us which the participants have learned to use
in our Sound-Studio and
we make sound recordings as a relevant
alternative to photos.
Week 10-12:
In the weeks before the
journey we have achieved an impression of which areas concerning job/education/leisuretime
these participants need to know more about.
During the next 3 weeks we now are visited by guest teachers, visually handicapped people who are working in the relevant fields or we visit them in their firms, educationcenters etc.
Week 13-16:
Again the participants make
a project together or individually among others
in order to practise relevant
handicap compensating reading and working methods.
Each participant's future
plan is developed and meetings will be held as
needed with the municipality.
The participant's family is involved too if he or
she wishes it.
8.
Contacts are maid to relevant
workingplaces or local student advisers as
part of the final plan.
10. The participants benefit from the course.
As The Institute is nationwide
we or our colleagues in other departments see most of the participants
to counselling or on other courses in the future.
By these means we have got
the impression that the Future Workshop course have worked as the intended
turning-point for about 2/3 of the participants untill now.
11. The Staff members situation.
All of the staff members
- not only the social worker and the psychologist - participate in the
clarification process and join into disussions and
sometimes even conflicts
with the participants.
It is inspiring, but also
exhausting. For sometimes we have wished for a
supervisor who can inspire
us to develop the course further and to see things from new angles. So
we are working on that.
12. The future plans for The Future Workshop.
We plan to continue developing form and content now on our 13th course.
Last year the social worker
connected to the course has been on one year
of higher education and
in that connection she has done research in the topic: The influence of
social groupwork on occupational choice-making by young adults.
At The Institute in Denmark we still are very engaged in this course and we arer looking forward to develop it further.
Thank you for your attention!
13. Summary.
6 years ago at The Institute
for The Blind and Partially Sighted in Denmark
we invented a new 18 week's
course for visually impaired young people.
We call it "The Future Workshop".
The aim of the course is
to assist each participant to make a realistic and
satisfying plan for the
future, concerning occupation, job or education.
Form and content of the course
are described as well as the experiences from the 12 courses we have completed
up to now.