Working through Others: Extending and Enhancing your Service

The course provides a step-by-step guide to enable you to recruit and train group facilitators, and then set up, support, maintain and evaluate conversation groups.

This course is based on the learning and experience of setting up and running peer-led conversation groups at Aphasia Re-Connect. The course is led by trained volunteers with aphasia and supported by volunteers without aphasia.

Who is it for?

This course is for anyone working with people with communication disability, and who wants to learn how to run patient-led conversation groups.

Timetable

This course runs over one full day.

Benefits

The course enables you to set up, support, maintain and evaluate patient-led conversation groups.

The course takes a very person-centred approach, incorporating the views and opinions of trainers with communication disability within the training. We explore how to genuinely involve people in the running of groups with training and ongoing support and supervision.

You will experience how we deliver the training to volunteers and people with communication disability together. The course also covers recruitment, process and structure.

By the end of the course you will:

• Learn how to train people with aphasia and volunteers to work together as effective partners
• Gain practical ideas for developing peer-led groups
• Learn how to recruit, supervise, manage and support peer-leaders and volunteers
• Gain skills to successfully manage and address many of the pitfalls that present barriers to group growth and development
• Learn how to evaluate the groups and report back to others
• Gain insight into how groups work
• Take away key tips for managing groups
• Have a key resource pack with everything you need to set up your own groups.

The resource pack to take away includes:

• A step-by-step manual
• A resource booklet
• A CD rom of resources to help you set up peer-led conversation groups. These resources are ready for you to adapt and use immediately.

The course is interactive throughout, with practical small-group discussion, PowerPoint, video, workshops, and the direct involvement of trainers with communication disability.

The course runs for seven hours (including two coffee breaks and a lunch break).

Certificates for CPD will be awarded.

There is no formal assessment procedure, though participants are invited to say how they will use the training going forward.

A good understanding and/or experience of communication disability is required. Otherwise, this course is open to a wide range of healthcare workers, volunteers, third-sector providers and healthcare professionals. No specific qualifications are required, just a practical working knowledge of communication disability.

English requirements

You will need a good level of spoken and written English to enrol on this course.

• The ‘How to run peer-led conversation groups – a guide for group coordinators’ (McVicker S and Swinburn K 2009) offers you everything you need to set up and evaluate a group, and to keep your group and volunteers supported and motivated.
• Roberta Elman (2006) Introduction to Group Treatment in Neurogenic Communication Disorders: The Expert Clinician’s Approach.
• Simmons-Mackie, N., RJ Elman (2015) Negotiation of Identity in Group Therapy for Aphasia: the Aphasia café. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 46 (3): 312-23. Taylor & Francis