The Adkins Life Skills Program: Career Development Series
The Adkins Program is a powerful tool to strengthen the capability of an organization to deliver excellent counseling services to its clients. It is described more fully elsewhere in this Website. It is a ten unit, video-based, comprehensive, multimedia group counseling/learning program designed to help people choose, prepare for, find, get and keep jobs. It has been installed in a wide variety of agencies, schools, and community organizations serving the needs of many diverse disadvantaged populations. Over 1700 agencies in 43 states across the nation have installed the Adkins Program. (See "About the Program" for more information)
Training Programs For Life Skills Educators
The Life Skills Educator Training Program (LSETP) is required for any organization using the Adkins Program. It is a 3-day experiential, hands-on training program which trains practitioners and administrators how to create effective learning groups, how to conduct the 4-stage learning model, how to deliver a wide range of multimedia learning activities and how to establish a well-functioning Life Skills/Career Development Center. This training program for staff helps them learn the instructional and counseling skills they will need to deliver the program effectively and utilizes similar small-group methods of learning that staff will use with their clients. Refresher and follow-up training is also available. The Institute has trained over 10,000 teachers, counselors and administrators, most of whom have rated the training program as excellent. (See Staff Training for more information)
Program Design and Development
The Institute has a unique capability for designing and developing psycho-educational programs for a wide range of populations and life problems. Its special method of assessing need, called the Reconnaissance Method is a means for understanding how a particular population is experiencing a variety of life problems and is the basis for creating a systematic taxonomy of psycho-social learning needs. The Institute's methods of design and development, its learning model and its use of multimedia and small-group learning, can be used to create a wide range of new coping skills programs. The Institute specializes in programs which can be used in thousands of institutions to help persons cope more effectively with the predictable problems of development, the choices they need to make and the inner and outer barriers they confront.
Refresher Training Program for Life Skills Educators
We developed the Refresher Training Program for Life Skills Educators (LSEs) as a way of providing continuing professional development for the staff who deliver the Adkins Program. Though an exciting and rewarding job, being a LSE is also very demanding. LSEs can experience burnout unless they have a chance to share problems and questions with other LSEs, get some recognition for their efforts and get re-stimulated with new ideas. The workshop focuses on issues of career development, group management, the operation of the 4-stage learning process, the creation of internship and job placement opportunities. Part of the training agenda is always tailor-made to the specific needs of participants.
Counseling Skills Workshop
A two day workshop to help counselors improve their counseling competencies for working with disadvantaged clients on an individual basis. This workshop focuses on various counseling skills of counselor-client communication: creating rapport, paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, posing questions, assessing client problems, confrontation, interpretation, facilitating client exploration and providing feedback.
Program Evaluation and Research
The Institute also can enter into contracts to design and carry out evaluation studies to determine how effectively an organization or part of it is performing its functions. The study can start with problem analysis, staff problem diagnosis, needs assessment or the evaluation of the effectiveness of various systems. In conducting evaluation studies the Institute performs various tasks such as study design, structured interviewing, instrument development or selection, data collection, statistical analysis and report writing.
Mission Training And Organizational Redevelopment Training
The purpose of this two-day training program is to help an organization revisit and reassert its primary missions or new missions, to develop common frameworks to accomplish those missions, to refine the structure of the organization and its communication patterns to facilitate mission accomplishment and to set in motion the means for insuring more effective, collaborative governance. This training is planned with top staff and, where relevant, members of the board of directors or advisors.
Installation Consultation For Life Skills Sites
Members of the Institute's professional staff are available to visit organizations currently using the Adkins Life Skills Program to help insure that the program is being effectively installed and implemented. It also engages in problem-solving sessions with key agency staff to improve an agency's ability to deliver a more focused, comprehensive array of employment preparation services to clients.
Life Skills Orientation For Administrators
This is a one-day program to provide those who have responsibility for the Life Skills Program, but do not work directly with it, with an understanding of what the program is, how it should be delivered, what the projected outcomes should be, how it fits into a comprehensive delivery system of educational and training services and how it can be used to obtain recognition from the public.
Supervisory Skills Workshop
This is a two-day intensive workshop to help supervisors help counselors who work with the difficult life problems of disadvantaged adults and youth to be more effective. In the workshop supervisors learn ways of managing people, materials and resources to obtain the greatest productivity from the Adkins Life Skills Program in the context of other programs offered by the agency.
In-Service Workshops For Life Skills Educators
The Institute holds an annual conference to provide an opportunity for those working with the Life Skills Program to share ideas and experiences, to discuss and propose solutions to specific learning problems experienced by practitioners, to learn and practice more advanced teaching and counseling competencies and to build professional competence and motivation.
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