The following presentation is to introduce the Now and Next program to our New Zealand audience. It includes the below sections:

The founders

At a glance

Now and Next was launched in 2015 at Plumtree, Marrickville, NSW by Sylvana and Annick who sought to share their lived-experience as well as their professional expertise in the disability sector. With the benefit of hindsight, they asked: “What would the best intervention for professionals and parents to ensure a good life for our children and families?” They applied ethnography, positive psychology and family-centered design thinking to implement radically new solutions and harness previously untapped expertise and enthusiasm.

The Now and Next program was co-designed over a year with the first 80 families who participated in it.

As of yet, close to 500 participants have graduated from the 43 programs, including 8 online ones, carried out in 4 countries: Australia, Finland, New Zealand and Canada.

Some organisations have embedded this methodology into their service designs. Click here to see the 'bridge' model.

The Now and Next program

The program begins with a visioning session, followed by an 8 week, 2.5 hour per week, or a 4 full day protocol. Program elements are aimed at progressing children’s goals by engaging their families. Through interactive group work, the program supports families to vision, plan, set goals, and develop goals into action, in the context of a peer led environment.

Program outcomes

• Parents empowering each other as peers and growing their informal supports and networks - our role is to assist families empower each other.

• Family leadership development and capacity building

• Families learn to formulate goals and the next steps to take goals to action

• Families experience crafting effective relationships with professionals to achieve goals for their children

• Evidence-based and collecting data on a real time basis, during programs through a bespoke platform

By and for families - What is a Peer Worker?

Now and Next workshops are facilitated by Peer Workers. Peer Workers are defined as people with a lived, personal experience who are trained and employed to support others (their peers) who face similar challenges.

Peer workers have been shown to:

• • • Increase hope and optimism of clients,

    • Promote holistic and inclusive services and approaches,

    • Decrease social isolation,

    • Encourage active participation of service users,

    • Help individuals develop self-management and coping strategies

    • Foster strengths- based approaches in families.

Peer Workers can fulfill a multitude of roles. Event Coordination, administration, project management, graphic design and more. Peer Facilitators refer to Peer Workers who facilitate workshops, in this case Now and Next.

Background

Despite the increasing uptake of family capacity-building theory in past decades, there is a dearth of practical tools to support its implementation in Early Intervention, to complement traditional discussion or assessment-based goal setting. We therefore expanded on earlier co-design with parents raising a child with disability or developmental delay, and tested practitioner experiential training.

Pictability described - our innovative vision-setting tool

Pictability(TM) is a game-like tool for parents to create their positive, strength-based vision for their child, their family and themselves. During the vision setting activity participants:

• Select images to represent their child’s strengths

• Choose images, ranging from concrete to abstract, from which they:

  • • Formulate and write goals for their child, their families and themselves

    • Assemble these long-term aspirational goals on a Vision Board

• Select one goal per category

• Formulate first steps to achieve each goal, and Assemble these short-term goals onto an engaging ‘Action Board’, clearly delineating focus and action points.

Pictability visuals were co-designed with families to build capacity and inspire wellbeing and flourishing (Adler & Seligman, 2016), and they were informed by evidence about how parents used Individualised Funding to achieve their goals (Mahmic & Janson, 2018).

The tool includes multiple cards and boards designed to support parents expanding on ideas to create deeper and more meaningful (i.e., developmental, social, learning) children goals as well as family and personal goals for themselves. The visioning experience lasts about 1.5 hours. During the remainder of the two-day training, participants learn about the theoretical background of this approach, unpack each of the above activities, workshop them, facilitate one Pictability session with a family, and discuss their initial facilitation experiences in small groups.

Built on adult learning principles

Workshops are built using Principles of Adult Learning Strategies through the theoretical framework developed over a decade by Carl Dunst’s team (Dunst and colleagues, 1994 to , 2008, 2009). These principles are: Introduce, Illustrate, Practice, Evaluate, Reflect and Reach Mastery. Dunst & Trivette (2009) coined the Participatory framework as the supporting theoretical framework to effect change in the vision for disability rights. Parents learn to coach their child to improve outcomes for child, family and parents.

Training families and professionals

Your organisation opens two pathways. One is travelled by families, the other by professionals.

Importantly the destination is shared, as is the journey taken.

The illustration above show the 2 ways to proceed as an organisation:

For families….

Your organisation begins by,

Step 1- Hosting a Now and Next program which includes Pictability.

Step 2- Peer Facilitator Training: On completion of the program you are able to identify potential parents to be trained as your own Peer Facilitators.

Hub: Once training is completed through a combination of traditional teaching, mentoring and real time practical experience, you are able to create your own Hub and conduct programs for your families on an ongoing basis. Further families may be selected from your programs to become peer facilitators.

All graduates become part of the alumni network of support.

For professionals….

Your organization begins with,

Module 1- Pictability Experience: Experience the Pictability program from a parent’s perspective

Module 2- Practical Workshop in Pictability Facilitation

Module 3- Audit and coaching of a Practical Session where professionals in pairs, facilitate Pictability to one another.

Completion of the program qualifies the professional to facilitate Pictability sessions.

The two pathways converge and provide the basis for Families and Professionals to work together with an accessible family-centred approach.

Externally evaluated

We needed the big picture, so we contacted the Centre of Community Child Health at Murdoch Children’s Institute to do a process and outcomes evaluation of Now and Next. The institute is the largest dedicated to child health research in Australia and one of the top five in the world.

The evaluation covered 15 Now and Next groups run between January 2017 to March 2018 that included 154 families. It looked at whether the program was delivered as intended if it was reaching the target groups and the participants’ experience. It also assessed participant outcomes: if they achieved their short-term goals, became empowered and had an increased sense of wellbeing and positivity. Data was collected via online surveys at the beginning and end of the program and during the program by the peer facilitators.

A Reference Group and Internal working group helped provide guidance and feedback to the evaluation. Among the former were representatives from the Department of Premier and Cabinet; Aging Disability and Home Care; Early Childhood Intervention Australia NSW/ACT; the National Disability Insurance Agency; and Family Advocacy NSW. Click here for the Executive Summary of the results and here for a blogpost about it.

Contacts

Clayton Buffoni, clayton@plumtree.org.au

Sylvana Mahmic, sylvana@plumtree.org.au

Dr. Annick Janson, annick@egl.ac.nz