"What you always needed to know about intellectual impairment but were mostly never told"
This event introduces participants to many of the main impacts of intellectual impairment that will to some degree be reflected in the lives of most, if not all people with an intellectual disability.  This material is rarely addressed in formal training and gives participants greater insight into the daily difficulties that confront people with this impairment.  Also, the workshop equips participants with very practical ways of supporting people to succeed and understand.  Family members, advocates, staff and managers have found this event illuminating and practical.

Putting the Right Values Into Actions
What is the difference between a value and a fact? How do values govern our ideas about the world and how we should behave? Why do human beings behave badly and treat others improperly? What beliefs would one have to have in order to perform the right actions? These and many other questions are examined in this thought provoking one day event that aims to provide participants with an impetus to get clear and conscious about how they think, what they believe and how they behave.

Preventing Abuse and Neglect
This one day event examines the conditions that allow neglect and abuse to be perpetrated in human services. It explores what is known about human nature and our tendency to respond to the cues of an environment. When people are devalued, and treated in devaluing ways it virtually invites abuse and neglect. The workshop explores an array of approaches at the level of government, agency and individual to combat these prospects and includes some of the most powerful ways for people's lives to safeguarded and protected.

Does a Radical Rights Perspective Increase "Inclusion"?
This half day workshop looks at the emphasis placed on promoting individual rights for people and the problems of public acceptance when claims to rights are made without the accompanying emphasis on responsibility and obligations. The event address the real place of a rights discussion as well as the problems encountered when a radical rights perspective combines with radical individualsim. The nature of adaptive communities and the conditions for real acceptance are examined.

Increasing the Exercise of Adaptive Autonomy and Choice for People with Mental Competency Impairments
Many services seek 'choice' as the highest service benefit to be provided service recipients. This workshop examines the problems a singular emphasis on choice creates without proper attention to other principles - and especially so when service recipients are people whose capacity to predict and deal with consequences is reduced. The event will examine how a service, individual or parent can support a person to develop capacities in this area as well as reduce those practices that unneccessarily restrict and reduce people's decision making experiences.

"How Can I Know What Someone Else Needs?"
Central to the issue of relevant service is requirement to know the type and extent of needs of those being 'served'.  This event takes a close look at the dimensions of this question and examines the issues that can confuse, cloud or distort the understanding of peoples needs as well as some of the safeguards against making perceptual errors towards the needs of others.  The workshop has been valuable to family members, advocates and service workers and managers - especially of those services that support a devalued clientele.

Really Learning, ActuallyAchieving
When do people learn well?  What can a 'teacher' or instructor do to facilitate the successful learning of other people - whether children or adults?  This workshop examines the methods that have been shown through history to almost always work.  These approaches are introduced in a way that directly engages participants in practice and teaching, which proves to be both challenging but also very enjoyable to most participants.  The workshop is particularly relevant to those who support people who are competency impaired whether  in paid or unpaid capacities and who are seeking to make the most of peoples opportunities for learning and growth.

When Do Groups Work Well?
Most services tend to place people into groups to render the service.  This workshop examines the characteristics of successful groupings, especially from the perpective of competency and image enhancement.  As such, the workshop is quite technical, and layers out the dimensions that would need to be considered if people are to be grouped well - that is, meets their needs for competency and image enhancement.  These same dynamics are also relevant in service arrangements where a person is served as a 'group' of one.  This has been a valuable workshop for parents - especially as they negotiate service arrangements for their son or daughter, advocates and service managers and others who determine grouping arrangements for service recipients.

Formal Service - Informal Community and Relationships
This event is for 'community based' or home based service arrangements that wish not to interfere with or damage the strengths that come from people's other relationships - especially those that are long term and freely given.  This event explores the dilemma faced by services who have - sometimes by necessity - have beauracratic requirements, standards and conduct imposed upon them that potentially serve to interfere with the very nature of community life they are trying to support and facilitate.  This event explores the significant differences between formal service and informal community and family relationships and explores the ways that workers and agencies can ensure that the real nature of community is not destroyed by the formality that formal services inevitably bring.
This workshop is a must for anyone wanting to support people to become part, or to remain part of their community with the support and aid of an intervening human service.

"What Might The Future Look Like?"
A Workshop for Family Members who wish to plan successful futures for their family member with a disability.
This one day workshop provides discussion of:
· Some of the dissatisfying qualities of present circumstances for people
· 5 Frameworks for considering excellence in support arrangements
· A clearer notion of what brings fulfilment to a person's life
· An opportunity for examining the life that could be possible if people’s needs were met
· How to begin to make those things happen and ones personal role in that
· The most powerful safeguard for protecting the life of a person.

Basics For Boards - a workshop for Citizen Advocacy Committees & Boards
This event comes as a result of many years of CA involvement, training, conferences and visits to some of the most successful programs in Australia and the USA.  The workshop constitutes either an indepth orientation for new Board/Committee members, or as an effective revision of essential understandings for older members.  Of course, CA staff also find this event very clarifying and supportive of their role and relationship with the Board.