Training Seminars & Workshops
Dr Olive Webb offers workshops that are a blend of presented material and participant interaction with real-life situations to exemplify points of discussion. The workshops are therefore directly relevant to issues that are confronting participants. The workshops all confront the barriers to support and intervention and the real frustrations that support teams often meet.
Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder
What do people with ASD to know? What do they have to learn? What are their challenges? Does it have to be so hard?
People who are described as having Autism Spectrum Disorder are more like other people than not, but have to learn some things that others might take for granted. Failure to learn these things results in intense anxiety and often challenging behaviour. Families and support people need to know what these are. This workshop takes people down the pathways that challenge people with Autism Spectrum Disorder and offers strategies for them and their support people Anxiety
Anxiety is common in us all. In people with disabilities and especially people with Autism Spectrum Disorder, uncontrolled anxiety is often the central cause of distress and challenging behaviour.
This workshop helps us to understand anxiety and what makes us anxious, and the various levels of preparation and training that can help us prevent or deal with anxiety – whether it be mild and diffuse, or acute involving intense fear and panic attacks. Intellectual Disability: Critical Attitudes, Values and Support Practices
This workshop introduces people to the concept of intellectual disability and how people who have intellectual disabilities are challenged to participate in their communities. It traverses the attitudes and ways of providing support as they have changed over time.
It enables us to understand that when supports and services are woven around an individual and what that person needs to take their place in their community, the support will be relevant, progressive, cost effective, dignified and valuing. Intellectual Disability: Trauma and Recovery
This new one day workshop addresses the impact of intense, frightening events on people with intellectual disabilities.
The lives of people with intellectual disabilities are commonly characterized by control by other people, little control over events or people around them, broken relationships, and often abusive experiences. Events such as earthquakes may compound the effects of these. The traumatized person cannot be expected to ‘pull him/herself together’ or ‘get over it’ without special support. This seminar is designed to assist managers, middle managers and support people understand the effects of these experiences and to therefore better understand the resultant behaviour that might emerge. This has important implications for behavioural interventions and emotional support. Person-centred Workshops
Often we are involved in the support of people who are complex and very distressed and who challenge us on many fronts to understand what is happening and what we should be doing to improve the situation and assist them to better cope.
Invariably, we need to bring to the table knowledge from a variety of sources and disciplines. These workshops are an opportunity for support teams to contribute and discuss all the information and concerns they have about a challenging individual, and work together to develop comprehensive and co-ordinated support and intervention plans. Olive requires prior knowledge of the person concerned so that the workshop can be tailored specifically to the needs of that person. |
Introduction to Issues, Interventions and Support for Young People who Challenge Us
Everybody has times in their life when things are difficult, when we don’t understand what is happening to us, when things seem unfair and painful, and when we struggle to express the confusion that we feel.
When these things happen to young people who have not yet learned the usual rules for living, they develop others ways of coping that might work in the short term but let them down and even get them into trouble in the long term. This workshop discusses the evolution of complex and challenging behaviour in young people and the interventions and supports that are necessary to help them learn new positive adaptive coping skills as they mature into adulthood. Mental Illness and Intellectual Disability
Between a quarter and a third of people with an intellectual disability also have a mental illness.
Often, the mental illness is hidden behind other issues confronting the person and so diagnosis of mental illness may be overlooked when the person is being considered. This one day workshop introduces the broad categories of symptoms and describes their presentation in major mental illness. Guidelines for how mental illness might be addressed are offered. Understanding People who are Challenged by Attachment and Separation Issues (Personality Disorders)
Many people do not travel down the path of development and progressive achievement that usually occurs within a loving and protective family. They therefore do not learn the usual ways of coping with the challenges that life might present. Instead they learn ways that might solve their problems in the short term, but long term are maladaptive and destructive.
This workshop provides a framework for understanding how behaviours that now challenge us have developed and introduces strategies for helping people learn new behaviours and how to sustain relationships. Challenging Behaviours: Drivers and Interventions
Other people often challenge us with the way they respond to people and things around them.
People often communicate to us the things they are thinking and feeling by the way they behave. This is especially common in people who cannot communicate their feelings and needs in usual ways. Sometimes other factors can also cause people to behave in challenging ways. This workshop emphahsises the importance of data in guiding decisions and forming the bases of intervention programs. The workshop focuses on the important role of positive reinforcement in teaching new behaviours and rejects the role of punishment or aversive strategies. A framework for intervention programs that embraces environmental, interpersonal and learning factors will be introduced. Planning for Support and Development of People with Disabilities
This workshop introduces a multi-element framework that is the skeleton of successful service planning.
Many support plans are overly focused on risk management and crisis intervention, and omit the attention that must be given to proactive interventions that plan environmental, interpersonal, general programmatic and targeted interventions if change is to be achieved The effectiveness of the framework will be demonstrated with a range of case studies. Participants will be able to start to draft programs for people who they are supporting. |