This month's blog is really just a quick re-cap of 2011 and a sneak peek towards 2012.

We've branched into 2 new states and one territory this year, with work in Western and South Australia and Amanda's conference presentation in the Northern Territory.  One state though has almost become our second home. The work we have done on the new Lifestyle Planning policy with Department of Human Services, Aging, Disability and Home Care (ADHC) in New South Wales has been a significant part of our focus for 2011. We have talked about this in a previous blog and posted a number of comments and pictures on Facebook but I'd like to briefly mention it again this month. The workshops we've delivered in partnership with ADHC have taken an action learning approach to teaching and implementing person centred thinking. While teaching stand alone person centred thinking courses is a lot of fun and we feel confident that there will be some change as a result, these staggered workshops with set tasks in between, have allowed us to really gauge the changes that are taking place. We will continue to work with ADHC in 2012 and will be presenting on the project so far, at the Disability Professionals Victoria conference in March - we look forward to sharing more detailed information with you after that.

In 2012, we will be working together to design a training program that takes the best of the work that we've been doing and look to offer this to other customers around the country. We also plan to design some specific courses, to help those working in Home and Community Care Services in Victoria, to use person centred thinking skills to implement the Active Service Model. We'd love to hear suggestions from you as we design these courses/programs, so please email me with any thoughts you may have - debw@helensandersonassociates.com.au

HSA Australia will be 5 years old in March.  As part of our celebrations we will be doing some reflecting and seeking some feedback from our customers, so please stay tuned for that too.

Finally I'd like to wish all our customers, course participants and colleagues all the very best for the holiday season and leave you with an image of Basil the chocolate lab in reindeer costume - now the 2^nd dog to appear in the HSA Australia blog.