Photostory: Training the Family by Family team

Posted by Chris Vanstone on 21 November 2010 | 0 Comments
Tags: The Family Project, Family by Family

A month ago today we were in the Adelaide hills starting our first training camp for 'sharing families' - families looking to work and volunteer for Family by Family. It nearly didn't happen. Families pulled out last minute due to illness and at one point we were down to just two families attending. Later in the week, thanks to Carolyn's powers of persuasion we were up to four families, by the time the camp started back down to three.

At the camp we trained families in three everyday tools we thought they could use to help out other families - sharing stories, reflective listening and developmental experiences. The first camp went well but the feedback was that we'd tried to cover too much ground in too short a time.At the camp we'd asked people to explore the ups and downs of their own life - but we'd underestimated the time it would take to do this. Families wanted more time to role-play the interactions they'd have with other families and to rehearse how they would share their strategies with families seeking link-ups. In addition we felt we needed to more explicitly address why gossip and judgement is a bad thing.

One month on and we've recruited a second cohort of sharing families and trained them, last weekend, on an improved Spring Starter Camp II. Now we're up to 9 sharing families and back on target. At Spring Starter Camp II we stretched the learning over a full weekend. Friday night covered the Family by Family values, beliefs and vision. Saturday focused on developing listening skills, mining and sharing personal stories, Sunday on rehearing interactions with other families, through role play and through engaging other sharing families in developmental teaching experiences.