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Making
Choices as We Age: A Peer Training Program
by Tamar Heller, PhD., Linda Preston, Tia
Nellis, Alison Brown, & Esther Lee Pederson,
M.Ed.
This
is a curriculum which prepares adults with
developmental disabilities to teach their
peers how to make choices and to make plans
for their later years. It may be used in residential
settings, vocational programs, and self-advocacy
groups.
The
goal of this program is to provide the peer
trainers and the people they train with knowledge
of the aging process and with self-advocacy
skills which they can use to begin making
plans for their later years. The curriculum
has four sessions:
Session
1: Making Choices . . . learning about
making decisions in your life and speaking
up for what you want and need.
Session 2: Rights and Responsibilities
. . . learning about what your rights
are and how to take responsibility for the
choices you make.
Session 3: Healthy Choices . . . learning
how to make healthy choices and how to take
responsibility for your own health.
Session 4: Interesting Things to do in
Your Free Time . . . learning about the
different things you can do when you are not
working or when you retire from work.
The
Training Package includes a Trainer's Guide
and a Coordinator's Guide. The Trainer's
Guide includes sections on how to teach
and manage a class, a scripted curriculum
with helpful hints for each of the four sessions,
materials for a student notebook, and extensive
graphics.
The Coordinator's Guide consists of
three sections which provide:
- guidelines
for administering the entire project,
- guidelines
for people providing support to participants,
- outlines
for two workshops (teaching peer trainers
and co-trainers; teaching the people who
are providing the support to the participants).
The
process for implementing peer training is:
1) Teams of Peer Trainers and Co-Trainers
are assembled.
2) Teams are taught the content of each session.
3) One session is chosen and practiced by
each team while the Project Coordinator teaches
the support staff how to facilitate choice-making
4) Peer Trainer and Co-Trainer teams teach
the four sessions to group participants.
The
benefits of peer training include:
- Increasing
the self-esteem of both the people who take
the course and those who do the training.
- Helping
agencies organize to support personal choice
and decision-making.
- Providing
continued support to both the people who
take the course and those who do the training.
- Providing
support people with more effective ways
to help people with developmental disabilities
make their own decisions.
- Teaching
people with developmental disabilities the
skills to enable them to make decisions
and plans and set goals for themselves.
- Giving
Peer Trainers the opportunity to experience
the role of "teacher".
| Available
from: |
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The
Clearinghouse on Aging
and Developmental Disabilities
Department of Disability and Human Development,
University of Illinois at Chicago
1640 West Roosevelt Road
Chicago, Illinois 60608-6904
Telephone: (312) 413-1860
Fax: (312) 996-6942
E-mail: rrtcamr@uic.edu
Web site: www.uic.edu/orgs/rrtcamr/index.html
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Description
of Resource: Trainer's Guide including student
notebook, Coordinator's Guide
Approximate Cost: $55.00 (additional Trainer's
Guides are $25.00 each) (US)
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