TWG Update – June 2018

[Krithika Kandavel]

1. Seating and Mobility Academic Resource Toolkit (SMART):The Integration Subcommittee’s SMART was launched on May 22nd, 2018 at 12:45 pm South Africa at the WFOT 2018 conference. Please find the SMART link here: http://smart.dev.wheelchairnetwork.org. We welcome additional contributions and any thoughts or ideas you have that can improve SMART in subsequent development stages.

2. Hybrid paper published: ‘Development of a Hybrid Course on Wheelchair Service Provision for clinicians in international contexts’ suggests a hybrid version of the WHO WSTP-Basic course may be a successful training method for some trainees. Review the article here: http://ow.ly/lY6W30kxVj2

3. Upcoming Workshops
RESNA 2018: Sunday, July 15th, 2018 from 8:00 am to 9:00 am EST at Potomac Room III, Ballroom Level:
WS54 – Development of a Wheelchair Training Toolkit

4. Upcoming ISWP Training of Trainers (ToT) Hybrid Basic Level, Los Angeles: The training will use WHO WSTP Training of Trainers materials and will be held Monday, August 6 – Wednesday, August 8, 2018 at the UCP/Wheels for Humanity offices in Los Angeles, California. Participants will complete several modules online before the in-person training. Dave Calver and Yohali Burrola-Méndez will facilitate the in-person sessions. To help support trainers’ travel and time, food during the training days, and to manage other logistics, we are seeking $1,000/participant. We still have two slots open and request your recommendations of trainees through the Google form by Sunday, 1st July 2018: https://goo.gl/forms/TRJowgn7lZ9czkSb2

5. Professional Standard Board Status: The ISWP Professional Standards Board members are currently reviewing the launch and pricing model for the credential. The members have been asked to reply with a response of: voting in favor, not in favor, or in favor with recommendations prior to the next meeting to be held in July.

6. Mentoring status & updates
The subcommittee is in the process of completing the recruitment of mentors and mentees that will participate in the next phase of the mentoring program, which will run from August – October 2018. 3 mentors and 13 mentees have confirmed their participation to date.

[[email protected]]

Congratulations on the publication of the Hybrid paper! Excellent work. Re ISWP-sponsored training opportunities (e.g. the ToT Course in August 2018 in LA), I feel that we should be going beyond the WHO content, given the evolving evidence. For instance, it would be justifiable on the basis of the research evidence to include much more time on wheelchair skills training in both the online and practical portions of such courses (4-5 hours in total).

Lee Kirby

[[email protected]]

Lee,
Thank you for your continuous support on this project. We agree on the need to go beyond the WHO content especially in the topics that include minimal training such as wheelchair skills and maintenance. However, in this first pilot, due to time constraints, participants are given equal time to practice their presentation of topics that include wheelchair skills (as a part of user training), in addition to the other wheelchair service steps. As part of the training, we will collect participants’ feedback that will help us guide the development of an extended version of the ToT in the future. We will make sure to mention work developed by other groups on specific wheelchair steps and where trainees could access this additional training.

[Elsje Scheffler]

Hi Lee and Yohali.

I totally agree with providing trainers with additional content of relevant and appropriate training packages and topics. However, as this is specifically a WHO WSTP TOT, with no additional time provided for, all the WHO content must be covered. Part of the WHO content cannot be replaced and/or reduced. If content is replaced/reduced, it can no longer by called a WHO WSTP TOT and participants may also not receive certificates indicated that they have participated in the WHO WSTP TOT.

I suggest that additional courses for trainers are held where other training packages and content are focused on. This way, optimal time and focus are given to each course/topic. This will ensure that trainers are exposed the the required depth of each course.

Regards, Elsje

[[email protected]]

Thank you Else, good points. Your comments raise a few important questions:
1) Are the ISWP courses “WHO” or “ISWP” courses? (I’d vote ISWP, using WHO material plus other evidence-based content)
2) If WHO, should we at least make every effort to add evidence-based material? (I’d vote yes)
3) If WHO, what should we do about any WHO content that is now known to be incorrect (if any)? (I’d vote that we at least flag it as such, but preferably remove it)

Lee

[[email protected]]

Hello – thank you for your comments.
The training that we will facilitate in Los Angeles was developed considering the WHO WSTPtot training materials, aims, and objectives and our intention is to pilot an alternative learning methodology, a blended approach, as we did it with the Hybrid Basic Course in 2016-2017. We call it Hybrid WHO WSTPtot Basic Level. We also want to note that we (the trainers) are not doing any training per-se in the in-person sessions, rather allotting that time for trainees’ practice presentations and providing feedback. We will need to think about how to include more ‘training’ presentations in future sessions. At that time, we will consider a different name.

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