"A Meaningful and satisfying life for All"
Central Office, 501 Eighth Ave. S. Kenora, Ontario, P9N 3Z9
Tel. (807) 467-5225 Fax 807-467-5247 email central@kacl.ca
March 31 Report to Ministry of Community and Social Services
Late in the year the Association learned that it had been selected to particpate in a pilot project for Focus on Inclusion
In a letter to the Executive Director Jim Retson, Laurie Thompson, Director of Community Development and Innovation, indicated
We are looking forward to working with you and the other stakeholders to pilot the resource Focus on Inclusion. As you know, the goal of the process is to build a culture, policies, systems and practices that lead to inclusion both within the organization and in your community.The process will focus on all stakeholders in the organization, including those that are supported, their families, Board members and other volunteers and staff, to ensure they feel included. All of these stakeholders will need to participate in the process.
Central to the project are "ten critical success factors" that Thompson beleives need to be in place to be an inclusion focused organization. The team facilitators will be working with KACL to better understand those critical success factors; identify your organization’s strengths to be celebrated and areas for improvement; and to develop a manageable plan aimed at moving your organization to higher levels of inclusion.
The process includes the following steps.
Learn, Reflect and Interpret
1) Stakeholders reflect on the success factors and how they think the organization is performing in those areas. Stakeholders will complete a questionnaire which allows us to collect some perceptions and feedback about inclusion prior to our facilitated conversation. It is also hoped that the questionnaire will stimulate people to think about inclusion and motivate them to want to have further conversations about it. It is not meant to be a ‘report card’.
Stakeholders can complete the questionnaire electronically or in hard copy. KACL hopes to have as many stakeholders as possible participate in providing feedback. Hopefully all Board and full time staff will complete it. The facilitators will help KACL to choose a representative participate, including the people who are supported, their families, other volunteers and part time staff. we recognize that this may not be feasible. If this is the case, we can work with you to identify a selection of representatives of other stakeholder groups and customized the survey for particular targets (e.g. to Board and staff, people who are supported, their families).
Next Steps
Community Living Ontario next compiles and summarizes the feedback from the questionnaires. Representatives from the stakeholder groups participate in a half day facilitated session. This group should be large enough to include a good cross section of stakeholders, but small enough to have meaningful dialogue. The session will be led by Laurie Thompson and Linda Mollenhauer. At this session, we will report back on the findings from the questionnaire and facilitate discussion about what it means for the organization. The purpose of the session is to highlight strengths and areas that can be improved and identify key actions. The discussion is also intended to be a learning process that engages people in becoming more inclusive.
Next, Community Living Ontario prepares a report that summarizes the findings from the questionnaire, outlines strengths and areas for improvement and identifies actions to be taken. Then KACL will have to identify how it would like to move forward with the initiative. The facilitators recommend that the organization set another half day session to develop a more detailed action plan with measurable objectives, clearly identified priorities, strategies, assignments of responsibility and timelines. This will allow KACL to evaluate progress in building on its strengths and making improvements. Needs for additional training will be identified at the completion of the reflection process.
The entire project will begin with a conference call January 22 2007 with Linda Mollenhauer (author of the resource), Gail Malcolm ( Assistant Project Coordinator) and Laurie Thompson to review the intent of the projec, to review the process steps, identify stakeholders who will complete the questionnaire and participate in the session and to determine how best to complete the questionnaire.
