This month's blog comes from NorthStar.......

We had an extremely inspiring month with our community and relationship building efforts. We were fortunate to be able to attend the Learning Community for Person Centered Practices Annual Gathering, where we were able to brainstorm, learn and share with many members that are trying to attain great community lives with important people in their lives. We also were able to participate in a web-ex conference call with Michelle and Amanda, with HSA,  to hear great efforts being made in other parts of the world, then take the information gathered at these two inspiring events to renew our passion for taking the community connecting efforts forward with in our own agency.

Michelle shared how she uses The Who Am I...My Style tool to learn more about the people she is serving. We were inspired to go out and try it and had a great time getting to know each other with two individuals that we support and their teams. This was a great tool to use to get to know each other better. Practicing it with staff first made it a fun way to get the individuals and their teams to open up and share what they know about each other and gave us ideas we may not have had when it was the individuals turn.  This was a great team building exercise as we got to know each other better and looked at what makes us have great days, what gifts we have to share and how we can find opportunities to share those gifts and passions. After completing the tool we came up with an action to take in order to ensure that this was an exercise that has some on-going meaning.

Throughout our learning process of the last few months we have found some things that we would like to share about our tool use.

1.  If you put the tool of the month sample in with paychecks, staff receive them.

2.  If we don't come up with an action plan after using each tool it loses meaning and application. The action plan keeps it in peoples minds more as they go out and try things.

3.  If we practice on ourselves and staff, the people we support enjoy the process more as they don't feel like we are doing something meaningless to them. They enjoy giving input to those that support them.

4.  Practicing the tool on a staff member also helps that staff person think of ways to improve their community lives, therefore making them a more valuable asset to the people they support.

5.  It is ok if we are not "experts" in building community and relationships. What is important is that it is important to us so we keep trying, and that we continue our learning and growth so that we can become experts.

We appreciate all the shared learning that we are receiving in our journey to support great community lives and want to thank HSA and the Learning Community for Person Centered Practices for all the inspiration, guidance and help along the way!