The WorkAbility Partnership

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The WorkAbility Partnership
Supporting young people in transition
Simon Offor (Head of Senior Secondary) Naranga
Special School, Frankston, Victoria November
2008
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• Description of Project
• An evolving training, employment and support
  services partnership supporting people with a
  disability in their transition to employment.
• Key Personnel
• Simon Offor (Project Manager - Naranga School).
• Pat O'Connell (Executive Officer - FMPLLEN).
• Michael Paxton (CEO - Job Focus).

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• Envisioning the Future
• As a leader across three quite different schools,
  I have long been aware of challenge of balancing,
  on the one hand, day to day contingencies (and
  maintaining stasis) and, on the other hand, the
  need to embrace change and to keep an eye out for
  medium to long-term trends and opportunities.
• A futures thinking approach, Brent Davies (2006)
  suggests, may mitigate against falling into the
  trap of being caught reacting to the day to day
  where the urgent drives out the important
  (where) the future goes unexplored and the
  capacity to act, rather than the capacity to
  think and imagine becomes the sole measure for
  leadership.

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• Background
• In the early months of 2006, following my
  appointment as Head of Senior Secondary at
  Naranga Special School I began tracking the
  post-school school destinations of our Senior
  Secondary students.
• And I began asking lots of questions.
• As this process unfolded I consulted widely with
  stakeholders involved in the process of
  transition .
• A number of issues of concern emerged.

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Stakeholders Consulted

• People with disabilities their families
• Schools
• FMPLLEN
• Adult training support service providers
• Employers
• Registered training organisations
• Apprenticeship centres
• Group training companies
• Disability employment services
• Disability business services
• Disability support agencies
• Federal, state and local government

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• Issues Identified
• The low levels of educational achievement and
  employment outcomes of people with a disability.
• The uncertainty and change for young people with
  a disability during the transition to employment.
• The uncertainty and change for families and for
  older adults with a disability returning to work
  or entering work for the first time.
• Often a lack of genuine inclusion of people with
  disabilities in the transition process.
• The lack of recognition of the diversity in
  families of people with a disability including
  familys levels of available resources, skills,
  and access to community networks.
• The serious lack of co-ordination, collaboration
  and planning between key stakeholders.

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• The Vision and Strategic Intent
• My initial discussions involved a number of
  meetings with Pat O'Connell (Executive Officer
  from the Frankston Mornington Peninsula Local
  Learning and Employment Network) and Michael
  Paxton (CEO of Job Focus - a disability
  employment agency). Our common concern grew into
  a steering group with a vision centred on
  addressing these issues broadly and holistically.
  
• After reflecting on our data, and listening to
  what our stakeholders where saying, we began to
  develop our strategic intent. Strategic intent,
  Davies (2006) argues, is about knowing what
  major changes we want but not yet knowing how to
  achieve it.
• Initially our strategic intent focused on
  bringing all the players involved in the
  transition process together in dialogue.

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• Our wide consultation with the community and
  industry eventually identified the hospitality
  industry as offering significant training and
  employment pathways for young people with a
  disability.
• However, there are very limited options in the
  Frankston / Mornington Peninsula area for young
  people with a disability to gain the appropriate
  mix of employment and structured training to
  assist them make a successful transition from
  school to long-term sustainable employment.

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• Dal Gourmet Café and Catering
• In 2007 we learned of a highly successful
  organisation in Geelong addressing these same
  issues of school to work transition as us. This
  group had been operating their Gourmet Café and
  Catering business for several years and provided
  both training and supported employment to over 50
  people with a disability, including a significant
  intake of school leavers every year.
• This organisation had developed an wholistic
  model, providing participants with individual
  advice and support, further education and open
  employment opportunities, as well as training in
  independent travel, budgeting, accommodation and
  leisure opportunities. Participants are also
  actively involved in the planning, management and
  operations of the business/service.

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• After a couple of visits we could see the
  potential to replicate this model in our
  community, particularly since the organisation
  offer a package of direction and support
  (including consultancy, mentoring and training)
  for groups aiming to set up similar enterprises.
• Our group were now well on their way.

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Strategic Principles Processes
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• Reflection
• The issues faced by our students as they
  transition from school to post-school options are
  not unique to our community. Other communities
  have tackled these issues, some more successfully
  than others.
• After reflecting on where we were at,
  investigating what other communities have done
  and analysing research, our group began to map
  out a vision for the transition of young people
  in our community.

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• 2. Strategic Thinking
• Where Could We Be?
• Our vision was to develop a holistic, whole of
  life approach to transition through a partnership
  providing a range of options not currently
  available.
• The strategic intent of a partnership targeting
  skill areas known to provide training and
  employment pathways for people with disabilities
  (and which also match more broadly regional skill
  shortages) grew from this vision.
• The WorkAbility steering group applied the
  principles of successful strategic planning,
  which Davies (2006) argues, moves through the
  process of reflecting on and conceptualising the
  concern, then engaging the people and
  articulating the strategy to all the
  stakeholders.

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The Strategic Thinking Cycle

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• 3. Engaging the People
• Engaging stakeholders to embrace the strategic
  intent was not difficult, as most organisations
  and their key personnel could readily appreciate
  our strategic intent and the many benefits of
  such a partnership.
• At times questions arose around ownership of
  pieces of the perceived pie and where the
  boundaries of responsibility lay. To avoid
  sensitive turf wars, we heeded Davies (2006)
  advice and committed ourselves to engaging in
  ongoing strategic conversations, strategic
  participation and strategic motivation to ensure
  we engaged stakeholders and leveraged their
  resources and expertise.

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• Davies (2006) talks about strategic conversations
  being conversations that move away from
  day-to-day operational matters of organisations
  such as schools and move on to the fundamental
  discussions of their fundamental nature and
  direction.
• Davies (2006) describes deep leadership as
  focusing on developing these conversations.
• This process of meaning making through dialogue
  and of unpacking the fundamental issues around
  transition has been critical to the success of
  our project to date.

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• Strategic Principles Processes

Participation
Strategic Conversations
Strategic Capacity
Motivation
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• 4. Articulating the Processes
• Communicating the strategic intent effectively to
  all stakeholders has been critical to the success
  of WorkAbility.
• We ensured our project and our strategic intent
  gained wide exposure through forums such as
  school leadership and school council meetings,
  parent information nights, Principal network
  meetings, FMPLLEN meetings, and a range of
  meetings with various industry partners,
  including Federal, State and Local Governments.
• This type of focused stakeholder engagement
  ensured that the whole community understood the
  direction our project was headed.

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• 5. Making it Sustainable
• Sustainability, says Davies (2006), is all about
  creating an achievement culture that lasts.
• Sustainability is not the same as maintainability
  and Davies (2006) defines it as the ability of
  individuals and schools to continue to improve to
  meet new challenges and complexity in a way that
  does not damage individuals or the wider
  community but builds capacity and capability to
  be successful in new and demanding contexts.

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• Throughout the WorkAbility project we have been
  guided by the three factors Davies (2006) found
  need to be present for strategic change to be
  successful and sustainable.
• Firstly, sustainable strategic change must affect
  the deep and underlying principles of the
  organisations moral purpose and its learning
  imperative. Sustainable change would focus on
  developing areas and activities that affect the
  life opportunities of the children it serves, and
  the deep learning skills and knowledge that they
  need to develop. In the case of WorkAbility, a
  school-community partnership has broadened and
  deepened the possibilities for communities to
  address the challenges of transition for students
  with a disability.

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• Secondly, Davies (2006) found that strategic
  change lasts over time, and that change is
  fundamental and desirable and is not dependent on
  a single leader.
• WorkAbility is building a strategically focused
  sustainable organisation with distributed
  leadership provided by a steering group (which
  will in the future most likely become a Board)
  constituted almost entirely of parents and other
  community members .
• Thirdly, Davies (2006) found sustainable change
  has breadth, meaning not only it encourages new
  ideas to spread widely across organisation's, as
  well as extending the strategic vision, direction
  and understanding of strategic change across the
  wider community of stakeholders.
• WorkAbility exemplifies the sort of alliances for
  strategic change advocated by Davies (2006)
  alliances which can provide a critical role in
  supporting and creating a demand for change in
  the local community that will contribute to the
  long-term enhancement of the learning
  opportunities of all.

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The WorkAbility Model
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What Partners Bring To The Partnership

• In-kind and cash donations
• Pro-bono or discounted services
• Sponsorships
• Training
• Sharing skills and knowledge
• Scholarships and awards
• Access to community programs
• Mentoring
• Sharing or donating premises other
  infrastructure
• Employment and/or work experience

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• Learning's So Far
• The importance of timing It was necessary to
  develop a reasonable and practical timeline for
  this project. It was often a challenge to keeping
  the project moving at a consistent rate, without
  burying busy staff, to achieve my set targets.
  However, such projects are long-term affairs,
  with Davies (2006) suggesting that in envisioning
  our strategic futures, we need to think in terms
  of a five year plan with less detail as you go
  on .. its not the detail you want, its the
  general direction that you need, futures thinking
  and having ideas to generate discussion.
• Valuing People This project has reinforced the
  critical importance of working widely with
  diverse groups and individuals when addressing
  matters of educational concern. From the simple
  act of seeking feedback genuinely (and acting on
  it) to thinking broadly of ways to use the
  expertise of those around you, people are often
  one of our most untapped resources.

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• The imperative of inclusion WorkAbility has
  truly been a journey where we needed to ensure we
  had everyone on board so as not to leave key
  people behind (including people who could later
  create problems and hinder the journey). We have
  been successful because we shared the vision and
  planned widely stakeholders. We also kept
  stakeholders informed and up to date with whats
  happening.
• The value of knowledge In the initial stages in
  particular, it was important to research widely
  to ensure we were up to date in our knowledge.
  Sources of information ranged from my
  professional readings accessed through the Monash
  University Alumni website, Googling and
  extensive telephone as well as face to face
  conversations.
• The need to delegate - The greater the delegation
  of responsibilities in a supportive environment,
  the more effective the change. This includes
  building the capacity of others in all areas of
  Sergiovannis domains.

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• The enormous power of School/Community
  partnerships This initiative has highlighted
  the great strength of school/community
  partnerships. Being a multi-faceted partnership,
  WorkAbility has provided partners with
  opportunities to contribute in a number of
  different ways ranging from providing
  sponsorship, training, skill and knowledge
  sharing to sharing or donating infrastructure,
  making cash or pro bono contributions, to
  providing access to community programs and
  providing employment and/or work experience
  opportunities. For us as a school, working
  together with others in partnership across the
  community, government and private sectors allowed
  us more successfully access and share valuable
  resources and avoid duplication fragmentation
  of service delivery to improve outcomes for all
  our young people.
• Finally, drawing on the thoughts of Terence
  McKenna, I have found through this project that
• Nature loves courage ... and rewards it with
  success.

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• For more information
• Simon Offor
• Head of Senior Secondary
• Naranga School [phone] or 0415 943 121
• Pat OConnell
• Executive Officer (FMPLLEN)
• [phone]
• Michael Paxton
• CEO (Job Focus)
• [phone]