Learning Disabilities Workforce Events 13th and 19th February 2009

 

The two events coincided with the long awaited publication of the Valuing People Now document. This was an opportunity for people to gain awareness of both Valuing People Now and Skills for Care workforce priorities.

 

• Information flyer
• Learning Log Leicester
• Learning Log Nottingham

 

The bookings for the events at Leicester and Nottingham were oversubscribed and despite the bad weather, the level of attendance was impressive. The participants were from a wide range of backgrounds, for example, people who use services, health and social workforce leads and those working in the criminal justice system.

 

The events ran smoothly with a little help from Optivote - handset tool that enabled gathering information from participants at the start and end of the day. The atmosphere was one of enthusiasm, active participation and being positive. People were genuinely interested in workforce issues and getting to grips with the proposed and ongoing changes in regards to personalisation and service delivery.

  

Presentations

 

• Valuing People Now Support Team - Helen Mycock
• Regional Overview for workers - Lesley Barcham
• NMDS-SC - Amanda Ashworth
• Training and Standards - Jim Thomas
• Common Core Principles - Sue George
• Training and Standards - Marie Lovell
• Active Support - Christine Harcombe
• Macintyre - Sarah Burslem

 

The East Midlands Workforce Strategy Group will be organising further workforce events. One way that people can take forward their views is to get involved with their local learning disability partnership boards which can be found on the Valuing People Support Team website,  for more information and links.

 

Thanks to everyone who made the events a success by their participation and help with the planning of the events.

 

• Evaluation and feedback report

 

Feedback from evaluation forms

 

• More time for speakers
• More involvement from users and carers
• Feedback from workshops
• More time for group sessions
• Very good
• Useful
• Start later to allow for regional travel, working parents and carers to get there

 

Suggestions for further events

 

• Training
• Toolkits
• Local organisations doing speeches
• Interaction between health and social care
• Direct payments and individual budgets
• Examples of how different people have used their IB and how is this different to what services they used before
• Development and implementation of minimum standards for managers Updates and development on qualifications
• Details on regional based training activity
• Workforce planning for the differing sectors
• Commissioning
• Recruitment of staff
• Larger font on name tags and organisations

 

Positive comments

• Conference well organised and good atmosphere
• Workshops with people with learning disabilities as trainers
• I have learned so much about active support and I am strongly recommending it for my service. I believe that this will earn a positive outcome our service users life not and in the future, as well as the staff to be more engaged as well as the service users.
• Very informative
• Great networking events
• Very informative and enjoyable
• The conference was very useful and well structured. Speakers were good and very knowledgeable. Definitely new ideas and values learnt, which is worth to think about and implement in practice. Great that people with learning disabilities are taking part
• Great workshop by Gill and Selma
• Mcintyre great. Great day lots of learning and directions to take back to my area 
• Great day lots of sharing and learning. Good to hear from other people about such a good range of things
• Would be good to hear more from people with learning disabilities and family carers
• Fantastic