SUSIE MALLETT

My visitors today

Sunday 16 May 2010

Follow up……

"Me as my Mum", portrait of Mum by A.B. aged 9, 2006



...to Eins, Zwei, Drei

I am continuing here the conversation with German conductor number three who commented on my Eins, zwei, drei posting early last week.

This is the response that she wrote on the comments section of that blog posting, followed by my response to her, posted only here.

Thanks Susie for your once again great blog. I am enjoying our professional discussions a lot and its nice to discuss CE apart from with my only conductor colleague, with someone with so much experience and knowledge.After reading your blog I was wondering if what is offered to young adults in regards of jobs and job choices conductively mainly depends on the kind of CE provision they attend.

Here, we are mainly offering sessional once a week services. In those few hours, I feel, we are working very hard to maintain the level of skills of our young adults, rather then pushing it really forward as mostly, and despite our hardest attempts, CE is not carried through at home. Going on a bus trip or even to the local grocery store usual is not feasible, and following up with one individual client seems to be come impossible with 60 clients to two conductors ratio. But maybe there is a way…


I
am also looking forward to hear how other conductors or provisions work with young adults and getting them ready for and into the workforce.

Aenna (3rd /2nd German Conductor I guess ;-)

Aenna, yes I think that you are right, the type of centre or the type of conductive provision that is available for babies, children and teenagers certainly does influence what is made available to them as young adults when they go off into the big wide world.I do not however believe that it is a case of the number staff available to do this work but has more to do with the priorities that a centre has.

How do they wish to use the facilities that they have, including the staff.
It could be that a centre says “We provide for children between certain ages and then there is a cut-off point”. It could also be that this is all that some clients wish for. Then there are other centres that may say “We are here for our clients, for their whole lives if needed, and this includes offering conductive provision of some kind through into adulthood.”

Summer camps are offered all over the world, I do not believe that it can be any easier or more difficult to organise a summer camp with a very "traditional" conductive programme han to organise one where the skills of daily life can be practised. Activities, for example, like planning a menu and a shopping list, or taking a trip to the shops on the bus to buy the ingredients to bake a pizza for lunch. Or organising group discussions, role-play and activities to encourage young adults to develop skills useful to them in the different situations that they will find at work or at college.

At a summer camp, in my experience, there is always enough staff to do such things.So yes, Aenna, I agree there probably is a way.
No, there certainly is a way but, as the Dad in the link in my later blog posting says, the will has to be there first. Personally I see no reason why, if some clients move on into work placements or university, then visits to them, when asked for, cannot be built into a centre’s timetable, just as their sessions as children were timetabled.

Unless of course this is a matter of who pays for it.

This is probably the crunch of the matter everywhere but, as I said, where there is a will there is a way. Lets ‘keep on talking about it and one day we may just find it.

Notes

Susie Mallett, Eins,zwei, drei -

Susie Mallett, Strange how things keep cropping up -
http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/05/strange-how-things-keep-cropping-up.html

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