About 10 years ago I became involved in the ShelterGuides project. Our 6 person team was carefully composed through a variety of metrics (including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats). The project was intended to become an accessible, blended delivery training to ensure the safety and quality of life of individuals with disabilities in the new expansion of home share as a housing option in BC.
We (the team) had, at the outset, a sense of urgency in line with Kotter’s Leading Change method (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015), knowing that this housing change was coming into practice without home share providers undergoing comprehensive training.
Home Share is a residential option for adults under the care of CLBC in which the individual shares a home with a Home Share provider who provides ongoing, individualized support. … The individuals within the home not only share their living space, but also their lives (John Howard Society, BC)
Devastatingly, the worst can happen if people aren’t trained, or if agencies leave vulnerable people with someone who does not care for them appropriately. A shattering example was in the news recently, with Florence Girard dying this past October of malnutrition. Her caregiver is now being charged with criminal negligence causing death (CBC article). She was living in a home share setting.
Knowing what we wanted to accomplish, we commenced working in an adaptive leadership style (Khan, 2017) conducting focus groups to understand the scope of what we should include in the course.
Development followed the Leading Change Method steps right through to delivery of pilot, rewrite, re-delivery (Kotter’s steps Consolidate Improvements and Produce More Change, Institutionalize More Changes as cited in Al Haddad & Kotnour, 2015). The final product after 2 years of development was a blended delivery course with three face-to-face days (beginning, middle and end) with the bulk of the content delivered online.
We had full cohorts initially, with current home share providers and interested people taking the course. By student response, the course was a success. By community response, the course was a success. People who didn’t previously have jobs got jobs caring for people in their home and existing home share providers who took the course told us that they learned things that were improving their lives daily.
And yet – no one past the initial offerings took the course.
Why?
We missed some key stakeholders at the outset. We had done focus groups of individuals needing support, and of people already providing home share services. Missing from that table were the licensing bodies and the governmental agencies that require (or in this case, don’t require) training.
The simple fact is, that people with very few qualifications are granted contracts to do home share. They are well-meaning, kind people, possessing clear criminal record checks. They participate in a series of intake interviews, learn some basic non-violent communication skills and basic first aid. Our focus group interviews with home share providers had shown that people felt overwhelmingly under prepared on welcoming someone to live with them, and that more training would have prepared them better for the realities of the lifestyle of home share.
In retrospect, data would have been useful. Relevant data would include the statistics of placement breakdown as relates to training levels. These data would have allowed us to approach different contract-granting bodies to ask that the training become mandatory.
A factor that would have promoted success would have been to have agreements with contract-granting bodies before or during the development of the course to ensure that our course would have ongoing enrollment.
While there were many successes in the construction of the course (looking at it today, it still reflects best practices in the field), the biggest obstacle has consistently been motivating people to take it. Without government or agency mandating training, people do not see the value taking the time to learn new skills. Lesson learned? Ensure there’s an audience for the project. Anyone can build a beautiful, useful and relevant, thing, but if there’s no end user the project itself gathers dust.
References:
Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: A model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234-262. Retrieved from https://doi-org.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/10.1108/JOCM-11-2013-0215\