The Awards were an innovation for this year’s conference—and very popular they were too! Nominations were sought in three categories:
- The client with outstanding personal achievement
- The centre most successful in transition for clients
- The centre offering most innovative practice
Judging was not an easy task—so many thanks go to Dave Fullerton and Mubina Asaria for the professional job they did. They found it very difficult to decide between some of the nominations, and we did award a number of Commendations as well as the awards.
Personal Achievement
The winner was Rachel, from the Center for Deaf-Blind Persons at the Beth David Insti-tute in Tel Aviv. Rachel is pictured here re-ceiving her award from Tim Simon, one of the Trustees on his recent visit. Rachel has Usher Syndrome, which is a genetic syn-drome that causes congenital deafness and progressive blindness. She studied – and now teaches – in Tel Aviv at the Karten Centre there.
Rachel came to the Karten CTEC in 2007 and began to learn computer skills, including the Oovoo program, which allows visual communication between two parties on the com-puter screen. Early in 2008 she successfully completed her studies. A series of meetings with and between the Center’s Employment Initiative Coordinator and the Karten CTEC Coordinator and additional studies, combined with her natural talent and good work ethic, helped her learn to teach. She has worked with Daniel for some time now, and found creative ways to work with him. In fact Rachel has been more than a teacher: she has been a role model too and proof that the student can become the teacher. She also knows ISL (Israeli Sign Language), which is how they communicate with each other, as he has sufficient residual vision to see signs. Overall, Rachel was able to really under-stand Daniel, to empathize with him, to understand his Usher Syndrome from personal experience, to understand his difficulties learning (as she encountered them herself not long before) and to suit the lessons to his level of learning, which is similar to her own. All of this more than made up for her lack of professional certificates and experience.
Many congratulations to Rachel on her achievements, and to all her work with her.
Success in Transition
The winners of this award were Orchardville Society, which is a Belfast based voluntary organisation
and charity which provides skills development, employment opportunities and a range of social economy activities to over 200 young people and adults with learning disability and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Pictured is Michael Walker, Business Centre Manager, receiving the award from Ian Karten and Graham Jowett.
In May 2009 Orchardville introduced new procedures for evaluating the development of trainee’s skills. The centre prides itself on continually improving the skills and employability of their students, but felt they lacked a formal mechanism to monitor progress and performance towards this goal. They have always compiled monthly records of students who progress from training into employment; however, over a period of time they came to believe that a much more in depth process was required.
The trainee skill evaluations are essentially individual learning plans, where incremental improvements to trainee’s skills are targeted and measured on a rolling six monthly basis. Working with adults with severe learning disability means that quite simplistic learning and development goals are often included, however, Orchardville firmly believe that continuing the personal and skills development of all of their students is fundamental to their approach. The skill evaluation of every student in the centre is reviewed at six monthly intervals and is used to inform and shape how best to assist the student progress towards employment.
It was this approach that convinced the judges that Orchardville were worthy winners. And you can see what their students felt about it!
October 13th proved to be a very lucky day for Orchardville Society: they also won a regional National Training Award on the same day.
If you want to learn more about the approach that Orchardville Society have adopted, please contact Michael Walker on michael.walker@orchardville.com.
Congratulations to everyone at Orchardville.
Innovative Practice
The award for innovative practice went to the Percy Hedley Foundation Karten Media Suite (KMS).
Pictured is Michael Curtis with Juliette and Richard (2 of the Project Workers), receiving their award from Ian. At KMS the team have worked on a variety of video projects from short animations to documentaries—including the Tyne Tunnel Wheelchair Race! Learning has been faciltated using individual projects which have led to a number of commis-sioned videos. Until recently clients worked at KMS on a sessional basis, but have decided to change to a project based working practice. This is viewed as an important step towards establishing KMS as a social enterprise. Another recent project was the filming of a fashion show run by a well known chain. The footage was broadcast on the local news as the professional film crew arrived too late to film the show!
Well done to Percy Hedley Foundation and the Karten Media Suite—and we really did appreciate you making the journey down to Birmingham. I understand their interview with Ian will shortly be available on the Karten Network website, so keep your eyes pealed.
If you would like to learn more about what the KMS does, please contact Kevin Taylor on k.taylor@percyhedley.org.uk .