Advanced Workshop: Who’s Life is it Anyway? – Enabling Choice & Self Direction in Social Care Practice

Date: 10th June 2024

Time: 10 am until 1 pm

Cost: €10 Administration fee

Venue: Online Advanced Inclusive Practice Workshop

Eligible Target Group: any social care practitioner who has previously participated in the Introduction to SRV course and would like to develop their knowledge and skills in more advanced SRV themes as they relate to social care practice. 

Duration: Each workshop is a 3 hour online interactive web cast session

This is a bespoke workshop specifically for social care workers/leaders/managers that have some understanding of Social Role Valorisation. This workshop will focus in depth on some the key concept of choice. The belief that people with disability are capable of determining their own life choices – including where and with whom they live, how they support themselves and what they aspire to achieve – is relatively recent. Historically, services for people with disability had largely been premised on the belief that they needed to be segregated in institutions, away from mainstream community life. However, the shift to community-based living options in recent years shows us that the rhetoric of inclusion is not always matched by real-world results. Instead of liberating people with disabilities into broader society, economy and culture, many community-based services continue to congregate, segregate and isolate people with disabilities. Too many people with disabilities are still not given real choice, or voice, in where or with whom they live, and how they live their lives.

‘Choice’ is the most powerful, and perhaps the most misused, word in the current lexicon of the service system. For some people ‘choice’ means that how they want to live has been discovered, realised and carefully supported. For others ‘choice’ is used as an excuse or alibi for abandonment, inaction and a justification for control. This workshop offers participants the space to explore the complexities of choice, their influence, the impact of lived experience on self-direction and the principles of Social Role Valorization that support the development of best practice strategies for supporting self-direction.

This workshop explores the impact of the ADMC, in the lives of people and on social care practice. Join us for this dynamic workshop as we investigate the practice strategies that can best support choice and self-direction as well as exploring our fundamental starting assumptions about the capacities and growth potential of the people we support.

Session Overview

• Welcome & Introduction
• Exploration of concepts embedded in choice, definitions and starting assumptions
• Exploration of SRV teaching and the intersection between understanding woundedness and the complexity of choice
• Rights frameworks, the ADMC and the impact on practice approaches
• Case examples and best practice strategies that support choice, autonomy and self-direction through relationship building and competency enhancement
• Q&A session