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Professional Development – Introduction

Disability Awareness Training - Professional Development

The Disability Awareness Training that we run across schools, universities, caring organisations, medical schools, government agencies and any other workplace you can think of includes learning modules covering the following:

  • Understanding and exploring key disability areas through experiential learning
  • Legislation that impacts on disability awareness
  • Disabilities and their impacts on individuals in their everyday life and workplaces
  • Reasonable Adjustments
  • Inclusive Teaching and Accessible Learning
  • Disability Awareness for Customer Service Professionals

We can link the sessions to your Disability Action Plan or any other area you need to focus on.This workshop aims to deepen awareness around the scope and nature of disabilities, impairments and medical conditions and build skills in all participants for developing a proactive response that maintains an inclusive workplace and learning environment that is focussed on ability.

The intended outcomes of the session are to help participants:

  • develop a better understanding of the 'social' and 'medical' models of disability
  • explore how unconscious 'disability' bias and 'ability' privilege manifests can impact on the way we operate
  • understand the nature and range of disabilities, impairments and medical conditions and their impact on the work and study environment
  • develop further skills that facilitate an inclusive life for staff and students with a disability.

All our disability awareness training is presented by people with disability and includes real stories and experiences of individuals.
The sessions cover different aspects of the DDA and good practice. Wherever possible, we tailor training to individual needs. For instance managers and heads of departments need to have a thorough understanding of their legal responsibilities while other staff may need only a brief outline of the law. We explore the issues then link to the needs.

Our disability awareness training covers:

  • facts and myths associated with disability
  • the social model of disability and political realities
  • disability legislation and legal requirements
  • communicating with people with disability
  • accessibility for people with disability
  • information access and assistive technology
  • specific implications of disability for security staff eg evacuation procedures
  • university, school and organisation policies and services available.

To book our disability awareness training sessions or ask for quotes or any questions please Contact Us

We have a variety of costs depending on session length as well as what your organisation requires and how you want to tailor the session/s to your needs. We are entirely flexible and will travel anywhere.

Follow on sessions -

  • We have an online module that links to these training sessions and follows on from the hands on session.
  • We also have a disability awareness training workbook participants can access after the session. There is also the opportunity to continue discussions or conversations via email or facebook work groups after the face to face hands on awareness session. Creating inclusive communities is our aim.
  • We can also tailor our information sessions around the NDIS and help explore how it will impact across organisations.
  • We also run teacher professional development on pupil free days and we also work in staff meeting sessions after school. The program is flexible to fit in with staff requirements. It is interactive and authentic and it promotes inclusive principles. These involve disability awareness and then link it to creating real solutions for teaching curriculum and pedagogy.

Listen to some of the ideas about Inclusion when we linked up with Steve Hughes and the unit he has run at USQ.

Discovering DisAbility & Diversity links Productive Pedagogies and Curriculum Development to create real change and it explores practical examples of good teaching practices. Teachers will find this program really makes an immediate and sustained difference to their teaching. Further research opportunities will be available very soon through USQ and Discovering DisAbility & Diversity.

Objectives of the Overall Program

  • To further inclusive practices in a work related environment.
  • To allow the participants to empathise with people with disabilities and want to create better environments for all.
  • To create a process that responds to the uniqueness of individuals, increasing Presence, Access, Awareness, Participation, Opportunity and Achievement of all individuals in a learning society.
  • To welcome, accept, involve and support all individuals, as full members of a learning society.

Workshops

We run a number of different workshops that we tailor specifically to the requirements of each individual school or organisation. You tell us what you are looking for and we guarantee we will relate our sessions around your needs. We have our original DDD Sessions that explore experiential discovery of all disability. There are various hands-on activities that simulate Autism, Intellectual Impairment, vision impairment, deafness and mobility problems. Feel what it is like to be a student with Autism in a classroom or a student with hand eye coordination problems. After learners experience these disabilities in the simulated form, they then have small group discussions with the leaders who facilitate questioning and exploration on a personal level for the participants. Existing knowledge will be explored to promote and enact this inclusivity and diversity policy of Education Queensland’s, Catholic Education and Independent Schools.

  • Practical Solutions Workshop Series
    We have a new 'Practical Solutions' series of workshops that cover a wide variety of areas of inclusive practice. These can be run in staff sessions or pupil free days or whenever you and your staff choose.
  • Hidden Disabilities Staff Professional Workshop
    We also have developed more specific sessions that are based around hidden disability, disabilities that are not usually able to be seen, such as ASD, Asperger's Syndrome Intellectual Impairment, Speech Language Issues, Dyslexia and Perceptual problems.
  • Early Childhood Staff Professional Development in Diversity Workshop
    We also run our Professional Development sessions for Early Childhood Educators as well. These sessions have a particular focus for early childhood educators, both in schools and childcare settings.