Dss instructor orientation jan14

Editor's Notes

• #2: If anyone has any challenges with the new materials to let Jay and Jen know
• #5: September – Thank you to those of you who piloted our new ISP training. We received a lot of constructive feedback from you, the providers, and the inspectors on how each of you felt the training went. Overall, the feedback was positive, so thank you for stepping up to tackle this big change with us. We’ll talk more about ISP when we get to the spring semester schedule and Annette Kelley will share with you some of her comments. October – The team building training seemed to be positively received by the providers. I was at two of the trainings, and it was so great to see everyone working together and interacting in this way. Thank you to all of you who helped us deliver this highly interactive and fun training, and thank you to Jay for developing it!November – We had a rough start to our Nov. training. I want to thank Jay for working so hard on the curriculum, Nico for helping to make the slides beautiful, and most importantly a big thank you to all my Nov. trainers for their patience, understanding, and hard work to deliver this curriculum to the participants. Overall it seemed to be positively received by the providers. They seemed to appreciate the information that we gave to them in this training, so I call that a success for everyone!
• #7: ISP of course will be our February topic. In March we are having Working with Families, which we haven’t had on the calendar for several semesters. In April, we are doing a new topic that is going to be set up in a way that the morning half will cover employee engagement and retention, and the afternoon half will cover cultural competence and humility. (Jay discuss) Finally, in May we are repeating our Agitation and Aggression training. This has been one of the most requested topics. Some of you may remember we ran this topic Fall 2012. It was so highly requested on our last training needs assessment that we decided to offer it again this spring. For those of you teaching ISP, keep your eyes open for the updated curriculum. We made tweaks to this training based on the feedback we received in September from the ISP trainers, inspectors, and attendees. This is still a work in progress, but it’s getting a little better each time. If you taught this in September, you know that one of the things we tried to do was cut back on the handouts that were printed for each packet. All of them are available online, and all of the handouts are sent to each of the participants prior to the training with instructions that they may want to print these and bring them to the training. However, we noticed that not very many people were doing this. It is our hope that with more reminders to print these documents, in addition to suggestions to complete the UAI training ahead of time, that we can cut out some of the common issues with this training. Again, this will take some time to work out all the kinks, so just bear with us for now. (Annette’s Comments)
• #8: Box of materials – If you’ve read the newly updated P&P, you might remember this huge change. This is explained in Section 1. Basically what we are going to begin doing is to have the boxes of participant handouts delivered to the training site the day prior to the training (except VA Beach which will not accept deliveries). You will receive your trainer folder in the mail which will be mailed two weeks before your training. If you are training in Virginia Beach – you will receive the usual box like we have been doing forever. The contact names for each site are listed in your P&P in the event that your box of handouts is not placed in the training room prior to your arrival.Return Boxes – I believe it was Gail who mentioned this in our last webinar, but what we are doing different here is instead of sending you a return box, you will be sent the pre-paid postage for both a flat rate medium box (this is our usual return box) as well as postage for a flat rate medium envelope. The dimensions of these items are listed in the P&P. Use whichever you need, and return the postage that you don’t use. These boxes and envelopes can be picked up at the post office. I will also include a return mailing label for you to place on the box or envelope. This information is found in Section 4.I also just want to point out that we have added a section regarding your projectors. Make sure you read that new section. Most of it was covered in the projector sign-out form you were sent. This can be found in Section 1. Training Sites: We did make one change for this upcoming semester regarding our training sites. We have discontinued our service in Petersburg due to a lack of attendance in that area. That site has now been moved to Richmond, so we will have two Richmond training sites – one in Henrico, which is the site we used in the Fall, and one in Mechanicsville at the Trinity Family Life Center. Please make sure you know which site you’re facilitating if you’re in Richmond. Another note about this: we had a mix up at one of our sites this fall regarding which room we were scheduled for. The correct room was listed in the brochure, but there was a mix up and the trainer went into a different room. Please make sure, especially for VAB and Salem that you’re checking which room our training is in as it can change in these two sites. This information can be found in the brochure, and it is displayed at these sites. If you’re unsure, you can always ask someone at the desk which room we’re scheduled for, or you can email/call me.
• #9: One thing that we would like to do with the trainer summaries is to have you all post them to our blackboard group. This is not yet a change that has been implemented in your manual, but we would like to do a pilot this semester. In our last DSS meeting, we discussed how your trainer summaries really provide a lot of really great information, and how great would it be to share them with each other. Many of you share some really great ideas on how you approached the training that we feel would be beneficial for the other trainers to see. We also felt that it would give everyone an opportunity to receive feedback on their summaries, and could give us and other trainers the opportunity to ask questions about your particular training. In order to be able to do this, you will need your VCU eID and password to log onto the blackboard system. If you are unsure what your eID is, you can send me an email. You also need to make sure your VCU email account is set up because this is where any announcements sent over blackboard are sent. We really want to start using this more because there is some benefit to having us all on the discussion boards together. We are working on getting Annette Kelley access, too, so that she can ask and answer any questions you may have regarding any DSS regulations or what have you.
• #11: Age Wave – brief overview (Jay?)
• #12: We have talked about this for semesters now, but we are finally going to begin tracking the DSS attendees for participation in the Continuing Education in Gerontological Leadership program beginning this February. When you’re introducing this program, please make sure everyone understands that this is a continuing education program – it is NOT a certificate program. At this time, it is not necessary for them to apply to be included. We are automatically tracking their participation in our DSS trainings. Once they have participated in at least 15 hours of continuing education with the VCU Department of Gerontology, they will met the requirement for CEGL recognition. What will happen at this point is that the person will be recognized by VCU Department of Gerontology as someone who is a leader in their job and someone who is actively pursing gerontological continuing education. That person will be notified of their accomplishment and in addition, their employer will be notified of their accomplishment. Down the road we will be building on to this Continuing Education program to include different levels of Gerontological Leadership.
• #13: Questions for Annette (DSS-specific) From Gail: I spoke with Jay at the conference I attended at Imperial Plaza in November  and he told me some things that were going to happen – I think it would be a good idea to share those happenings with the group and any other ideas!1a; 2; 3) From Sonya: It would be great to hear from DSS on these things so that we have this in mind during our trainings4) From Ronda Greene: specifically – will a facility get cited for not having these items listed when a resident is independent in their eye glasses/hearing aides/dentures
• #14: 1) From Annette Clark