A PATH for Alice
A plan for new beginnings!
This February Alice decided that she was ready to start thinking about the future and was looking for a way to gather some of her growing network together to dream and scheme with her.
Alice had started working with Karen Lai – Spectrum’s Employment Specialist – and their conversations went from big dreams to figuring out day to day events. Karen suggested that Alice might like to do a PATH to get it all on paper.
Alice invited her caregiver Dena and her employment support from WorkBC as well as Karen Lai and spent a couple of hours talking about her dreams for the future as well as making some plans for the next couple of years.
Alice found the process to be fun and not stressful. “Now I have things to focus on”
Alice has been focusing on her wish to work and having Frances Logan from WorkBC at her PATH helped her to deepen the conversation.
I asked Frances for her thoughts about PATH and it’s potential for people who experience disability. Here is her response:
“It is a very time-efficient way of gathering and discussing a lot of ideas, information and opinions from the participant and the support team.
It gives the person control over who they invite to the PATH process and allows everyone involved to come together and listen to ideas from many areas of the person’s life that they are all supporting in different ways, social workers, community inclusion workers , employment specialists, friends , family etc.
Everyone gets to see a whole picture and can then adjust their way of supporting accordingly.
The person whose PATH is being facilitated benefits from having an amazing graphic as a visual reminder to refer back to and will be able to trace the plan back through the process to review how they came to the decisions and review the goals as they go along.
The person is also in control of the pace, style and focus of the process and the extent of the time frame.
“The facilitator used great coaching skills and techniques to release and allow the flow of ideas and keep the process firmly under Alice’s control .”
After a couple of hours of conversation, laughter and deep thinking, Alice felt satisfied with her plan.
“I didn’t know I had all that on my mind” she laughed as she looked at her PATH.
I caught up with Alice this week just to check in and see how things were going. She was happy to tell me that her support staff had been hired (a big part of what she needed to have in place so that she could start pursuing her dreams of work and learning) and that they were well on their way to achieving some of her goals…
Congratulations Alice!
Respectfully submitted
Shelley Nessman
Associate Director – Person Centred Planning