Progress Report Update

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Mornin ... Mornin! Waken up kind of late. We were up earlier just for a few moments, but back to bed.

One of the things my mind thought of at that time was to check the on-line banking. I keep forgetting to get my check from work (I’d been gone the day they were passed out). I was worrying that there was enough in the account. What we found is that we must have made a mistake in the auto-payments, because it appears the rent check didn’t go out. Figured out what we did wrong and that we should get a check to the rental place toot sweet! *Sigh* Guess it’s good we looked...

Otherwise, we’d rather think through what happened yesterday. I’m sure there were other things, but primarily there were two really good things that happened. The first is that Sr. Took an hour with me to CALMLY go through some of the stuff we’ve been working on. And, secondly, we spent time on completing a curriculum for a 60 week client program called, "Leadership." Both left me feeling happy.

With Sister Tess there were a few topics to sort through. One was that I had handed in a proposed schedule for myself to start the new year July 1rst. The second had to do with the Performance (Outcome) Report.

The Performance Report was the trickier of the two. Hehe - maybe tricky is my kitties. They are playing and running through the house at breakneck speeds. One hid herself behind the couch and started yowling as if she were in pain. The other tip-toed over to see if she was ok and got ambushed instead! Man - they’re sneaky! Hehehe

Anyway ... Sr. seemed determined to get to the bottom of the report. After a few moments, she allowed me to go back and get a copy of my report already completed. I needed it to show her how things worked. We walked her through the paces. She was having a hard time that we’d requested that she do a percentage of each area instead of claiming how many hours should be spent on each.

We showed her how with the percentages, we could accurately pinpoint the number of hours spent for each group on any specific program area. She got frustrated with us and claimed that if something happened to me, they would never be able to figure out my system. We gently reminded her that, of course, all this would be documented.

Basically, what we did was to add up each DSPs percentage of time in the 13 areas, then we divided it by that number giving us a percentage of time ... a multiplier. Then we multiplied that by 1,800 (minutes in a week). That gave us minutes we should spend in the area. Then we divided that by 60 and got an approximate hourly number, then last we estimated those numbers to the nearest full hour. And ... it came out pretty good! Not so hard!

She didn’t get the formula, but was more willing to take the next step. So, we very carefully worked through her natural objections to be thinking in a way that was new to her by estimating the percentages. We stayed optimistic and encouraged her to be thinking through why one group should spend more time in any one given area than another. It took some time, but we were into the best of our patience because she was at least trying.

We worked through a few with her until we knew she had it. But, then instead of saying that was enough ... she brought out the next package we had given her with the estimate of how our schedule could look. We could tell she had spent a few moments studying it. She’s pretty thorough. We were very grateful for that. In the end, we didn’t get all that we’d asked for, but we got a couple major pieces of the pie!

Some of the things were same-o, same-o. We are to be continuing Annuals, observations and Qnotes and we came to an agreement that I’d only take four of the new clients. That will bring our number up to 24 (the other Q 26). Hehe ... we didn’t tell her that we thought this was a good number, because it divides out so well in many of our mathematical ways of thinking through things.

She had a few switches with our groups as well. She left me the Thinking Group, but figured that three groups would be too much. Unfortunately, that meant my Advocacy Group fell onto a back burner, though she did leave it open for a possibility. We left some pretty good arguments how it would supplement community needs for some of the higher functioning people who weren’t out in the community working.

The Leadership group which I thought for sure would be mine, she figured could be set up by us, but I would have to let someone else do the actual teaching. So, we agreed to that (because we were getting something else more important)! The Leadership curriculum and schedule is what was worked through last night. I had in the back of my mind a couple of the main proponents.

I had heard of a guy named Dennis Romig who had written a book called, "Side By Side Leaderhip." He had also written a book called, "Breakthrough Teamwork." I had copies of both books and after careful review, I thought the second book to be better for now starting the group. I found the parts I wanted taught, at the pace I thought a new staff could handle. It averages out to her reading 2.75 pages a week. I figured that’s not too much to ask.

The objectives of what she is actually to be teaching will have to be worked out, but as Sr. asked ... we only did the setting up of the curriculum. I wrote out that it should be a two hour group for eight individuals. They would start by either a 15 minuted walk or a quick card game of war. Both these ideas are new, but we have a couple of real high energy people in the group. And, at the end of the two hours, we would end in a 15 minute cool down period.

The main lesson part of the group (work from Romig) would only last a half hour. The new staff will be told to spend only 5-10 minutes total time talking, the rest of the time, I want the group involved in an exercise. Then with the second full hour, the individuals will interview themselves (as to work or home), peers or staff to produce reports for a Leadership newsletter. They will as a team be responsible for writing two 8-12 sentence reports each week (40 minutes). Then we will break these reports in half and in partnerships of two will use four laptop computers to write out a quarter of the weekly work.

Romig’s work would include topics such as teamwork, team creativity, interpersonal communication, team meetings, conflict management, team values, vision, and mission, team goal setting, roles and responsibility, team problem solving, team decision making, and work process improvement. At the end of 60 weeks, the individuals will have also flowcharted a work process to improve, analyzed, and implemented it as well as install the improvement in the bigger St. Rose Center structure ... Very Good!!

Hehe ... yep, that’s the program ... simple, right!? Oh, one more thing. We figure the group should get a new disposable camera every 6 weeks to share picture taking. That way, each can take six pictures every quarter (5 quarters total). We would hope that the secretary could help with the compiling of the reports/pictures into a newsletter. In an ideal world they could collect money for their work like 50 cents for an 8 page spread. But, right now ... we’ll settle that it go out freely to friends and family :) Pretty cool ...

*Gigglin* And, there is more! Sister decided that I could keep intake (she doesn’t want thatmuddled) and that I could keep program development and CARF, but the other thing?? She’s going to turn over staff in-services to me! I’m like trippin over in this knowledge! The catch is that I got to think of something else the other Q should be doing. Sister knows we work hard, but she’s thinking the other lady isn’t. We convinced Sr. To be handing over staff training though, because its been mucked up by the other Q for three years and the DSPs are complaining of redundancy. Our first idea Sr. accepted for the other Q is that she does the 80 hour on-the-job training with the new staff. Hehe - way too much time for my calendar!

We are going to switch over to the state program that is already written (the other Q is giving presentations off the top of her head on irrelevant topics) ... we’re not sure how much of this the staff knows already, but ideally, we would only spend a minimal amount of time on it (say half the hour) and most of that time will be preparing for short quizzes. We figure if they already know the information, no sense pondering over it. The other half hour of time, I want reserved so that once every 5 weeks, the DSPs be responsible for reading a chapter from the new collection and reporting/discussing it.

This is going to be one of the harder things I do ... beside the CARF stuff, but it’s all worthwhile. I still haven’t convinced Sr. To be given us a new title of Program Director, but we’re a step closer. The bottom line is that I eventually want to move out of the Q work, but I want my next position to be of responsibility over the Q’s. Even though authority will always rest with Sr. Tess.

Pretty much it for the day ... in all definite forward advancement don’t you think!

Picture - http://www.hants.gov.uk/discover/places/westwalk.html