New Associates Orientation Meeting Day 2, Session 1: Developing Effective Curriculum Instructions and Exercise Prompts Purpose The purpose of this exercise is to provide associates with an opportunity to demonstrate/practice developing curriculum and training that is targeted and tailored to meet the immediate needs of service providers and criminal justice personnel working in this area. Instructions * Divide associates into pre-arranged groups of three to four. * Give each group a scenario. * Each group will develop a curriculum for their training given the information contained in the scenario. * Each group will complete a session design form (which identifies the event, learning objectives, training delivery techniques, and content outline) and present it to the larger group. * The larger group will provide feedback. * After all of the groups present, the facilitator will debrief the exercise. The facilitator will identify common themes across all of the trainings, successful training techniques, etc. 1. Improving Your Shelter’s Capacity to Serve Women with Disabilities and Deaf Women The person who coordinates the training for the local shelter at one of our sites contacted Vera to request a training to help their staff better serve people with disabilities. The staff of this shelter recently received a disability awareness training that provided an overview of the ADA, the major disabilities, and the specific accommodations people with each of these disabilities might require. Although many of the staff who received this training is no longer at the shelter, the training coordinator does not want to repeat that training. She did not think that it really helped her staff to serve people with disabilities and Deaf women better. For example, when a woman arrived at the shelter who had a disability that was not specifically covered at the training, her staff had no idea how to respond. In addition, the training did not include any information on working with Deaf women. She is requesting a training that addresses the issues that cut across all disabilities and will prepare her staff to serve anyone with a disability who comes into the shelter for services. The training will last one and a half hours and will be mandatory for all shelter staff (roughly 18 people). 2. Collaborating Across Systems The Project Director of one of our sites contacted Vera and requested training on increasing collaboration across systems. Her request was prompted by a recent incident in the community: Sandra, an older adult with late-onset schizophrenia, was killed by her husband and long-time caretaker. An examination of this homicide by the fatality review panel found numerous gaps in the system’s response to her abuser’s violence and the victim’s requests for help prior to the murder. Over the course of several years, starting after Sandra’s diagnosis, she called the elder abuse hotline several times to report that she was being abused by her husband. APS workers conducted investigations and each time concluded that Sandra wasn’t experiencing abuse; workers suspected that Sandra’s call was a result of her schizophrenia and paranoia. The last two calls Sandra made, however, ended differently. During the first investigation, her husband admitted that he grabbed her and hit her after being confronted about the visible bruises on her arms. He said he couldn’t take the pressure of being a primary care provider. He was referred to a caregivers support network and the agency arranged for a personal care attendant to come in to help out from time to time. Several months later, Sandra called again. The APS worker confirmed the abuse, but she wasn’t sure what to do. She increased the amount of time the personal care attendant came into the house and searched for a respite care program for Sandra’s husband. The APS caseworkers did not identify the abuse as domestic violence, which would have opened up additional resources, nor did they contact a mental health provider for information on schizophrenia. So, the fatality review report recommended increased collaboration between APS, battered women’s services, and the mental health system. The Project Director of this site has pulled together several senior-level and direct service-level staff from each of these systems. You will have one and a half hours for the training. The Project Director wants this training to be the first step in this community building a collaboration across these three systems. 3. Working with Local Law Enforcement to Better Serve Victims with Disabilities Vera surveyed the sites that are receiving funding from the Disability Grant program to identify their training needs. Almost all of the sites said that they would like help to improve their police departments’ handling of domestic violence and sexual assault cases that involve victims with disabilities. So, Vera is offering a training on this topic at the next multi-site meeting and you have been asked to collaborate with several other associates to develop and implement the training. Ideally, the sites would bring representatives from their police department with them to the training. But, for various reasons, they are not coming. In some cases, the police departments lacked the time and resources to send officers to the training (which is out of state), and in other cases, the grantees and their project partners haven’t established relationships with their local police departments so that the invitation for training was met with skepticism and distrust. In light of this, the training should do two things: (1) increase participants’ understanding of the critical issues and responsibilities related to victims with disabilities and law enforcement and (2) increase participants’ ability to work with law enforcement to improve their response. The training is scheduled for one and a half hours. 4. Serving Women with Mental Health and/or Substance Abuse Issues in a DV Shelter At the urging of battered women’s and disability advocates, an agency that operates the city-wide domestic violence crisis hotline at one of our sites began collecting data on the number of women with disabilities who called seeking emergency shelter. After a year of data collection, shelter providers were shocked to learn how many callers identified as having mental health and substance abuse issues. Because of organizational policy, these callers were systematically denied access to shelter and given referrals to mental health and/or substance abuse programs. Motivated by this new information, the passionate executive director of the city’s Domestic Violence Emergency Shelter Provider Coalition contacted Vera to request a training to help them better understand the core issues and the types of changes necessary to make shelters accessible to women who have mental health and/or substance abuse issues. The Domestic Violence Emergency Shelter Provider Coalition is comprised of senior and mid-level staff from each of the city’s five domestic violence shelters. While staff from these shelter programs is divided about whether or not they should change their program’s policies, they are all open to learning more. Because of busy schedules, though, you only have one and a half hours to facilitate a training that offers some background on the issues and concrete strategies for how these agencies can meet the needs of women who have mental health and/or substance abuse issues. 5. Addressing Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in an Independent Living Center Several months ago staff at an ILC located in a rural county in one of our sites decided to hold a weekly support group specifically for their clients who graduated from their job training program and are currently working in the community. After several weeks into the group, a participant disclosed that she had been sexually assaulted by her manager. This triggered several other women in the group to reveal their past experiences with sexual assault and abuse perpetrated by family members, personal care providers and, in one case, a school bus driver. The group facilitators were alarmed by the disclosures, particularly by the fact that many of the women had waited so long to disclose and that no one on staff suspected that anything was wrong. Almost all of the women blamed themselves for what happened, and felt completely trapped and powerless while in the abusive situation. The group facilitators were unsure about how to respond, beyond reporting the new information to their supervisor. Clearly, they knew that the women in their group needed more information about DV/SA and clinical support, but as an agency they wondered how they could do a better job identifying the abuse early on, and what type of response protocols they needed to put into place when clients disclosed. So, the Executive Director contacted Vera for assistance in coordinating a training that would address these issues, and ultimately assist them in developing a response strategy. You have one and a half hours to facilitate a staff-wide training that consists of fifteen people and will take place in their conference room. Some of the staff are very interested in learning more, while others are concerned that implementing a response protocol (or even talking about sexual violence and abuse) will only reinforce harmful stereotypes that people with disabilities need to be protected and are vulnerable. 6. Serving Women with Disabilities Better at a Rape Crisis Center The new director of community education at a rape crisis center identified disability organizations as one of several underserved areas to focus targeted education and outreach efforts during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. As part of this initiative, throughout April volunteers and staff from the education department facilitated a total of six workshops for clients of various disability programs across the city. As a direct result of the increased education and outreach, the rape crisis hotline is now receiving more calls from women with disabilities, especially developmental disabilities since most of the programs visited serve this population. While the hotline counselors have some training on sexual assault against women with disabilities, they usually don’t get calls from women with developmental disabilities and feel wholly unprepared to handle them. The therapists at the center feel that they too need additional training to better understand how to communicate and appropriately serve this population. Everyone at the center agrees that if they are increasing outreach to women with developmental disabilities, they must be equally committed to providing responsive services. The Executive Director contacted Vera to assist them in coordinating a training that addresses specific ways their rape crisis center can serve women with developmental disabilities. 7. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Every year the NASW leadership focuses their education and research around an issue that is relevant to social workers in the field. This year the issue is broadly defined as “violence and disability,” and the topic will be presented to the membership at NASW’s annual conference. There will be several co-occurring break-out session that will address specific aspects of the issue. One of the NASW conference organizers contacted Vera for assistance in coordinating a break-out session titled “Violence Against Women with Disabilities: Considerations for Social Service Programs.” The organizer asks that the workshop provide both general background information, as well as things that practitioners should keep in mind when they go back to their respective programs throughout the country. Because they have only scheduled an hour and a half for break-out sessions, just the critical issues must be addressed. The conference organizer shared with Vera staff that there has already been some resistance from a small but vocal segment of the membership to this topic. Some local chapters have voiced the opinion that this issue is not relevant to their work and undeserving of such focused attention. Accessing Safety Initiative Session Design Form Thank you for agreeing to develop and implement a training for the Accessing Safety Initiative. Please provide us with an overview of this training by completing this form as instructed. General Information Please provide us with the following general information about the training that you have developed. Title: Duration: Facilitator(s): Training Details 1. What are the goals for this training? 2. What are the objectives for this training? In other words, what will participants be able to do by the end of the training? 3. What handouts, if any, will you provide to participants? 4. What training materials will you need (i.e. flip chart paper, markers, tape, power point, etc.)? 5. How will you need the room set-up? Training Agenda Please provide us with a brief lesson plan outlining how you will achieve the goals of the workshop session you have designed. Be sure to provide us with sufficient detail on your facilitation technique. For example, if you are planning to use an activity, please outline the activity in detail. Also, estimate the time you are devoting to each topic during this session. Time Topic and Facilitation Technique