***NEW: Module XII- VISION 20/20, Space Clearing Workshop
Module I - ASSESSMENT COMPONENT OF EMPLOYMENT COUNSELLING (ACEC)
Dr. Patsula originally developed this course to meet the needs of service organizations, particularly the Federal Government, in their career counseling role.
The assessment interview is a specific process for goal setting, based on collaboration and clarification. During the process, the counselor meets with an individual to formulate a counseling goal. Counselors must collaboratively evaluate the strengths (resources) and challenges (limitations) in order to develop realistic counseling goals. This approach is person-centered and empowers them to take responsibility for the decision-making process while offering them active and respectful listening and professional expertise.
You will learn:
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To help individuals play an ongoing and active role in assessing their difficulties and in finding solutions to resolve them.
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To respond effectively to reluctant and resistant client behavior.
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To conduct an effective assessment interview by establishing a working alliance with the individual, with a good idea of where they are now, and where they would like to be.
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To develop with the individual a specific plan of action, which is easy to measure, realistic, attainable, along with clear deadlines. Everyone benefits: the individual, the counselor and the organization. You should attend if:
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Need to prepare yourself to enter the career and employment field
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You are seeking to develop and improve your existing career counseling knowledge and skills.
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If you are looking for a systematic approach that will give you an effective mental road map to use when assisting an individual on their journey toward career fulfillment.
Module II - INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYMENT COUNSELLING
If Module I can be seen as a problem solving process of clarification and goal setting, then Module II can be seen as a process of goal confirmation, intervention and evaluation with the strongest emphasis on intervention. These interventions focus on providing counselors with practical and concrete alternatives to help individuals bring about the change needed to achieve their goals.
You will learn:
- Some specific counseling strategies or combinations of strategies to help individuals make difficult decisions or change learned behaviors.
- A model or a mental map which helps clients take positive action toward achieving their goals
- Interventions and strategies that are precisely tailored to the individual's goals as they progress toward self-sufficiency. You should attend if you:
- Are interested in adding new interventions and strategies to your counseling tool kit
- You are seeking to develop and improve your existing career counseling knowledge and skills
- If you want to add creative techniques and methods to help individuals move and advance in their careers
Module III - Group Facilitation
Module III was developed to help counsellors/staff lead groups and deal with group interactions more effectively. This course is not on group presentation and content, but rather on leadership and group interaction. Much of the learning in Modules I and II will be directly transferable to work with groups.
You will learn:
- The benefits and disadvantages of group services
- Member needs and roles, group stages, facilitation styles, and group communication skills
- To use the excitement that group work will open up as a way to offer members an efficient and secure environment in which to make important decisions and to master skills required to function in this world
- To demonstrate group communications skills and receive feedback to enhance their growth and professional development. You should attend if you:
- Are looking for practical and proven facilitation techniques that will enhance success with all types of groups including meetings, workshops, and community events
- Need to know what effective facilitators do and how they do it
- If you want to make your job more rewarding and meaningful by enriching and improving the quality and quantity of services
Module IV - Spinning Straw Into Gold (Creative Job Search)
As a job coach you are in a unique position to affect change in the lives of those citizens you serve and on the economic life of your community. Many of you have years of experience, with incredible depth and breath of understanding when it comes to the business of finding jobs. My hope is that this session will enhance and update what you already know; as well as provide time for reflection and reinforcement. For others, your counselor's toolkit will get packed with strategies and techniques to increase your effectiveness as a job coach.
Module IV covers the critical elements of career planning, aimed at finding work what will be personally fulfilling, both for yourself and your clients/citizens. SPIN straw into gold. (A metaphor for creative job searching):
S - Career success begins with Self-awareness
P - Package yourself, resumes, career brands, portfolios, bioblogs
I - Investigate and obtain Information on trends, opportunities and problems in the Labour Market.
N - Prove you can respond to the Needs of a prospective employer, interviews
A better job means a better life.
You will also learn the proper application of the following assessment tools:
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20 Questions - Informal
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Values Cards Assortment - Informal
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Significant Others Questionnaire - Informal
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Success Stories - Informal
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Holland Codes or Self-Directed Search - Formal
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The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) - Personality
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The Enneagram - Personality
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Career Occupational Preference Survey (COPS) - Interests
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Career Orientation Placement & Evaluation Survey (COPES) - Values
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The Career Exploration Inventory (CEI) - A guide for exploring work, leisure, and learning.
Module V - Job Finding Clubs: TRAINING FOR LEADERS
Turn on the television and we hear that unemployment is reaching double digit numbers as the economy slides further into a recession, which some are starting to call a depression. Now, perhaps more than ever, Employment Counselors who are in a unique position to affect real change in the lives of those we serve and in the economic life of your business community need training to set up and run Job Finding Clubs - according to Nathan Azrin's method.
What makes JFC's so outstanding and successful compared to other job search methods? First of all they work. Richard Bolles, (author of "What Color Is Your Parachute?") has complied research that states: "out of every 100 people who use JFC's to find work, 84 will find a job, which is 11 times higher than just sending out resumes on your own." That's an 84% success rate. Secondly, a job search can be frightening and depressing, many feel isolated and hopeless, in a JFC participants are provided with support and guidance from a trained group leader, but perhaps even more importantly from other group members attending the session. Thirdly, this is an intensive three-week approach, which at the heart of this program, uses behavioral therapy techniques and demands that each participant make ten contacts per day to uncover "Hidden Jobs."
The world is going through a profound change. Work has also shifted dramatically; it is inevitable that the way we find jobs has changed as well. Surprisingly, the Internet, although a great tool - has not proven to be a magic wand. It has not changed the essential nature of job-hunting, which is that to be successful, one must ultimately meet face to face with the employer.
This is all about creating new opportunities for our unemployed citizens. Rather than approaching employers to ask for something, we approach employers with something to offer, an ongoing partnership characterized by an equal exchange of resources and opportunities. This provides details about activities and procedures designed to achieve the single, overriding objective of the Job Finding Club: to help the job seeker find a job of the highest feasible quality within the shortest feasible time period.
Module VI - Life Balance (Training for Trainers)
Training for Trainers is a 3 day workshop to assist career practitioners to run group sessions for clients in need of skills readiness prior to entering the labour market. The curriculum addresses social, psychological, cognitive, and attitudinal factors associated with preparation to enter the world of work. Dragon 9's primary objective is to enhance the development of basic life skills, personal competence, and skills related to social influences that promote high self-esteem necessary for successful job search. Self-esteem is the health of the mind; therefore few subjects are of comparable urgency. To face life with low self-esteem is to be at a severe disadvantage. This workshop explores the following questions: 1. What is self-esteem? 2. Why is self-esteem so important? 3. How can we raise the level of our self-esteem? 4. What role do others play in influencing our self-esteem? Self-esteem is the single most important psychological subject in the world. The tyranny of low self-esteem is legendary: - It drains meaning and purpose - It blocks creativity and obscures options, possibilities, and choices - It dominates thinking - It distorts reality and perceptions - It masquerades as truth and insight - It cultivates a victim mentality that can be defensive and contrary - It destroys motivation to try to start - It gives up, sometimes to the point of suicide - It robs people of their future Every aspect of this workshop is connected to self-esteem, the core idea of this workshop is to teach: Your life is important. Honour it. Fight for you highest possibilities. Self-esteem has an immense impact on relationships, work and the struggle for happiness. It is the common denominator, a profound and powerful human need essential for healthy change and self-fulfillment. Of all the judgements we pass in life, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves. Many people underestimate their power to change and grow. The belief that they are powerless becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Of course there are no simple answers, but perhaps this workshop will give you some fresh ideas, new perspectives and some new strategies. Multi-barriered clients are becoming more common , as practitioners, we need to do all we can to create an environment that is conducive to all people making good choices no matter the cause of their challenges.
Module VII - Prime Time Leadership and Performance Management Training
What's in it for Employees and staff?
- Moves your career goals forward and enhances your employability and career development (provides good tracking for future career aspirations).
- Improves work satisfaction through ongoing positive and constructive feedback.
- Broadens your skill base and identifies real training needs
- Greater awareness of specific areas, which require improvements, and establishment of a supportive action plan to effect required changes. Feel proud of your contribution and service.
- Provide input into own work plan and province wide assessment of human resources engendering heightened commitment to achieve shared objectives.
- Clarifies employee's expectations.
- Provides opportunity to negotiate and question how job fits into the unit in relation to contributions of other team members.
- Concrete testimony of the contribution towards achieving the unit's objectives.
Benefits to Managers/Supervisors:
- Clearer understanding of who is doing what, therefore better use of human resources and better able to forecast and plan.
- Can plan resource or budget approvals for staff development
- Model career management
- Provides relevant, factual data on which to assess employees fairly and equitably.
- An opportunity to get to know employees better.
- Takes employee demographics into consideration.
- Succession plans for when baby boomers retire.
- Incorporate HR planning into business planning processes, and the development of unit, district and regional priorities. Benefits to Your Organization
- Multi-skilled, flexible workforce.
- Supports business and technological change.
- Integrates staff and organizational goals.
- Identify the employee competencies needed to develop as we modernize services
- Match employees and competencies as new initiatives come our way.
- Achieve provincial and district priorities and deliver on business plans.
Ensuring employees have an opportunity to direct the course of their own careers.
- By identifying and addressing early training and other work related problems we can ensure our people are better qualified and therefore of more value to the organization.
The purpose:
To understand the key concepts and purposes of Modules I, II and III and to be in a better position to support career counselors.
Note: The same benefits as listed for Prime Time apply to this workshop, however this session is more targeted to the career counseling services.
In a time when government is concerned with results in terms of investing in clients, it seems logical when staff training investments are made, that we look for results in achieving the desired learning objectives and transfer of skills to the job. Is it any wonder that we want to see tangible results when thousands of dollars are spent annually on staff training?
Since evaluation costs amount to a mere fraction of the cost of training, evaluation is a good learning investment. We also know that encouragement and support:
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Strengthens core competencies: the knowledge, skills and attitudes all career practitioners need in order to deliver effective and ethical service. Professional Behavior (Code of Ethics, Ethical Decision-Making, Commitment to Professional Development, Analytical Skills and Work Management). Interpersonal Competencies (Respecting Diversity, Effective Communication, Productive Interactions with Clients). Career Development Knowledge. Needs Assessment & Referral.
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Of learning is critical in order to determine whether knowledge and skill competencies are learned and transferred to the job.
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Exercises can verify that identified learning needs have been met and thus provide a measure of accountability
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Helps to indicate the effectiveness of learning activities.
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Of learning is consistent with recommendations from audit reviews.
Module VIII - Discovering your options aka "Individual and/or Group Service Needs Determination"
You should attend if you:
· Are currently working on the front lines of career and employment services
· Are seeking further development and greater satisfaction in your current position
· Want to empower individuals in identifying their strengths, values and services
· Are seeking to understand the resources and capacity of your community
The Philosophy behind this session is to help “empower†the client, it is important to note, this is done by the use of six critical steps which help the client understand his/her situation and what is to be done. Group interaction sessions (approximately two hours) allow the members to give each other support and to normalize their reaction to unemployment by listening to others’ reactions. Individual sessions, one-on-one interviews typically take 20 minutes, including documentation.
You will learn:
· To effectively clarify the purpose of the interview with the client
· To identify the client’s and service provider’s role and responsibilities
· To affirm the individual’s emotional state within the job loss cycle
· To assess with the individual or members, their employment strengths and needs
· To explain program and service interventions related to that need
· How to assist individuals one on one and in a group to develop an effective career development action plan
Module IX - Communication Skills
The aim of the Basic Communications Skills Training is to give participants a basic understanding of counseling and the skills required. At the completion of the course, participant's listening and responding skills will become more effective and their interpersonal communications and interpersonal relationships will improve.
Participants will also be able to demonstrate these basic skills and become aware of their own behaviors and prejudices.
Do you:
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Demonstrate respect to your client (discussing confidentiality, non judgmental attitude, genuineness, treating your client as a unique and capable person, etc.)?
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Encourage your client to actively participate in the assessment process, to enumerate resources and strengths, to take responsibility for the plan of action, etc.
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Demonstrate empathy for your client (demonstrate active listening through use of paraphrasing, reflection of feeling, communicating, understanding of your client's world, etc.)?
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Model concreteness and encourage your client to be concrete, particularly in the clarification process?
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Use reflection or paraphrasing throughout the interview to clarify the content of what your client is saying and demonstrate active listening?
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Reflect your client's feelings (both explicit and implicit); help your client to explore the feelings around the employability difficulty?
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Use open and closed questions appropriately to enable your client to tell their story and be specific?
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Use summary statements throughout the process to show movement and to revise the constraint statement?
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Facilitate the assessment process rather than direct it?
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Involve your client's commitment through what contracts (statement of purpose, contingency validation) and encouragement?
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Genuinely demonstrate commitment to working with your client?
Module X - Money and Business (Replaces Thrive in a Tribe)
Earn a living through business, Passion and Perserverance. 1/2 of small businesses start out of your home. Learn how to delight customers.
Module XI - Circle of Courage
The philosophy embodied in this circle of courage is not only a cultural belonging of Native peoples, but a cultural birthright for all the world’s citizens. Lacking a sense of self-worth, a young person from any cultural or family background is vulnerable to a host of social, psychological, and learning problems.
The four basic components of self-esteem are significance, competence, power, and virtue. Traditional Native educational practices addressed each of these four bases of self-worth:
1. Significance was nurtured in a cultural milieu that celebrated the universal need for Belonging
2. Competence and Mastery was ensured by guaranteed opportunities
3. Power was fostered by encouraging the expression of Independence
4. Virtue was reflected in the pre-eminent value of Generosity
Preamble – This workshop is designed to support the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice in achieving its goals of recidivism through engagement of aboriginal inmates into the workforce. Canada’s Tribal Councils through its Employment and Training Services have the expertise to deliver services to First Nations and others who are seeking employment support.
The Objective
· Support employers in providing employment opportunities for incarcerated and recently released first nation individuals
· Support inmates who may be on a “work crew” during incarceration maintain employment of find new employment following their release.
· Support those inmates seeking employment following release along with their family members - in the transition from incarcerated living to community living
The Opportunity
· Connect labour ready inmates seeking a renewed start with employers
· Remove transition barriers that inhibit incarcerated individuals from sustained employment
· Using a holistic approach connect participants to their community and employment
· Ensure potential employees are labour, with reduced barriers to success