PASSING Outline
The four primary goals of the PASSING workshop are to:
- train participants in the implications of Social Role Valorisation (SRV) to all services;
- enable participants to begin to develop competency as PASSING raters;
- provide a common orientation to a potentially locally administered evaluation system; and
- begin to identify and train potential raters and leaders for later PASSING training and implementation.
This workshop will introduce trainees to the third edition of PASSING which has been significantly revised from the earlier 2nd edition. 'PASSING' once having been an acronym for 'Program Analysis of Service Systems' Implementation of Normalization Goals, is now a brand for the tool which is the most recent method for quantitatively and objectively assessing the social role valorising quality of a human service, and which grew out of PASS, a more complex and broader human service evaluation tool. Unlike PASS, PASSING assesses only the social role valorising quality of human services, and is especially applicable to services to people with disabilities and/or people devalued for other reasons (eg., group residences, child development centres, special education programs, vocational programs. On-the-job training, rehabilitation settings etc.). Settings such as these will be evaluated by the participants as part of this workshop.
Prior to the workshop, participants are assigned to teams in preparation for the visits to the services to be assessed, called "practicum sites." Each team is under the direction of a team leader, who is an individual well trained and qualified in the SRV assessment of a human service. (The matching of team leader competence to the particular sites for which s/he is responsible, and the matching of participants to team leaders and to practica, can only be accomplished in a moderately satisfactory fashion because of the many variables involved. Therefore, virtually no one will find that the arrangements is totally optimal. In making these arrangements, we have found that we must settle for reasonable compromises, and participants are asked not to request transfers to different groups and team leaders.) All team leaders have had previous training and experience in PASSING or PASS, but will be additionally supported by one or more very experienced trainers and workshop leader referred to as "the floater" and/or "senior trainer".
After an extensive briefing, the team begins its practicum assessments just after midday on the first day of the workshop, probably with either an interview with responsible senior personnel of the service or with a tour of the service and extensive observation of the service program, including significant time with clients. These activities will continue through to the early evening of the first day. That evening participants will spend 2-3 hours making individual judgments of how the service performs on each of the ratings of PASSING. The second day, each team meets (usually at the workshop site) for an extended session called "conciliation." During conciliation evidence is gathered, analysed and discussed, and a team consensus on the service's performance on each rating is attained.
The team then scores the service (using standardised forms made available) and determines the "overriding issues" for the service including ways the service performance can be improved.
On day three and four, the process is repeated for a different type of service to (hopefully) clientele with different identities to the first service.
Team leaders have the responsibility for submitting a brief verbal report to the other teams on each assessment. Therefore team leaders carry final responsibility for deciding which level to assign to a rating in instances in which a team consensus is not achieved.
On the last day (day five) all participants reconvene into a plenary session in order to hear reports from all the teams, clarify final points on PASSING, and conduct an assessment of the workshop and of PASSING. Each team leader will have responsibility for developing and making a verbal report of his/her team's assessments to the plenary group. The team as a whole is expected to assist in the preparation of this presentation as directed by the team leader.
The team leaders are responsible for their team's arrangements during the PASSING workshop, including the site visits and conciliation sessions. Because the different teams may go far afield and may not see each other again until the plenary review on the last day, and because the site assessments, individual rating, and conciliations require unpredictable amounts of time, it will nearly be impossible to significantly alter the teams during the course of the workshop. Therefore participants are asked to reconcile themselves to the senior trainer's and team leader's judgments as to how the overall purpose of the workshop is best served.
By itself, this introductory workshop will not qualify all trainees to be full-fledged PASSING evaluators. It is entirely to be expected that some persons will require less training than others, and that a single workshop may not be enough to determine how much PASSING and/or other training will be necessary before a particular individual is able to competently participate as a rater in a bona fide PASSING assessment. However, PASSING is designed so that more people would be competent in its use after one or a few such introductory training experiences.
The workshop will be physically, intellectually and emotionally demanding. Therefore, participants should arrive well-rested, and plan to forego all outside involvements during the workshop days and nights. These workshops prove to be one of the most demanding events participants will ever attend. At the same time, there has been little dissatisfaction with the fact that these workshops have been so demanding, though some complaints have been received that this expectation was not made clearer in advance. Thus, at various times, participants arrived with the expectation of being able to master the contents of the workshop while only attending on a part-time basis, or spending evenings sight seeing, enjoying themselves with their families, etc. Some participants arrived at the workshops exhausted from work during the preceding days, and did not have the necessary reserves of energy and stamina to benefit optimally.
Participants must also anticipate that there is no single optimal structure for everyone and everything, and some trade-off in individual benefits for the sake of both maximal benefits to the maximum number of participants and the purpose of the workshop is reasonable.
Potential Participants:
The training is aimed at persons who are or aspire to be leaders in human services, especially in their local area, and especially in bringing about adaptive change. Additionally, the workshop is intended to support individuals who either are, or who are likely to become, deeply committed to devalued people and who wish to use SRV as a guide in their support of those persons. Such support may take many forms but one is an understanding, at a technical level of the changes necessary within human services if people are to experience better lives.
Potentially, many such individuals will be interested and able to develop beyond PASSING ratership competency and become PASSING assessment team leaders, or potentially even PASSING trainers
Pre-Requisites:
All participants must have attended a 3 or 4 day Social Role Valorisation Theory Workshop, prior to the Practicum. Participants must have the use of a P.A.S.S.I.N.G. Manual. The manual must be obtained prior to the workshop to allow sufficient time for preparation. Also available is the "Guidelines for Evaluators during PASS, PASSING for similar assessment of Human Service Quality", which may be available via your local SRV Group.
Registrations:
To register, contact your local SRV Group for registration details.