Courses & Workshops for Family Carers
Family Champion Course
This free course is for family carers of children and adults with learning disabilities. It is a 6-session course timed to fit in with school times.
The course is particularly for those people who want to use their lived experience as a family carer to develop further skills in order to support other families (ideally working with us at OxFSN). We also welcome people who want to do the course for their own (and their family members) benefit.
What you will gain:
- A network of family carers locally, supporting each other in their caring role.
- An understanding of person-centred thinking, planning and approaches in order to support your relative to develop a person-centred plan.
- An understanding of how to use the person-centred thinking tools to effectively plan for and improve the quality of life for your relative (and yourself).
- To recognise your own gifts and talents, as well as your relatives by the use of self-reflection skills.
- An overview of the health and social care legislation, enabling you to better navigate these systems
- An understanding of the Mental Capacity Act – rights and responsibilities under the act. A better understanding of choice and control and Best Interests decision making.
- An understanding of the core benefits for people with learning disabilities. How to manage your relative’s finances and or support your relative to manage their own money through supported decision making.
- See yourselves as ‘experts by experience’ and develop the confidence and knowledge to effectively support your relative to live the life they chose· Mentoring from experienced family carers who have themselves moved from being unemployed (due to their caring role) to volunteering and ultimately paid work.
- Confidence and knowledge to both improve your own skills and competency and to consider doing this for others in the future.
Course length: 6 x 4 hour in person sessions spread across a number of weeks. Free.
Doing the family champion course introduced me to other people in the same situation as well as providing me with the opportunity to turn something that I was knowledgeable about in to a worthwhile career – it has been the best way of giving back and OxFSN has enabled this to happen.
Caring has prevented me from following the career path I thought I would have - it's stopped me from being able to travel or work fulltime and profoundly affected my emotional resilience and therefore my confidence.
Now I get to work with another person who did the course, Kathy, and I now have a small network of family carers I bump into in town, make sushi with and meet at OXFSN events.
Person Centred Planning
Person-centred thinking and approaches places individuals at the heart of their own care, prioritising their unique needs, goals, and preferences over system-led processes.
This 2 day in person workshop uses person centred planning tools to help family carers focus on what is important to a person, their capacities, and what support they require.
When done properly, person centred planning can be life changing focusing on the detail in order to help your relative achieve a good life. The workshop can also be tailored to focus on specific areas such as planning ahead for supported living and social care assessments.
Course length: 8 hours over 2 days (in person).
Cost: Free.
Creating One Page Profiles Workshop
In this 3-hour workshop, OxFSN will focus on "person-centred thinking," helping family carers to capture a snapshot of their relative’s strengths, needs, and preferences on a single page. It will guide you through the process of completing a one-page profile for yourself as a first step towards using one-page profiles for the people you support.
It will also show you how to adapt one page profiles for your relative when in different situations.
Course length: 3 hours in person.
Cost: Free.
Information Events
OxFSN run a number of in person and online information events throughout the year for family carers. These free events cover a range of topics that OxFSN know are key to helping families understand the complexities of navigating the world of education, social care, health and benefits as well as planning ahead for the future.
Where possible, OxFSN invite professionals to attend to talk about their specialist subject and to give family carers the opportunity to ask them questions directly.
In the past we have had events on: The Care Act, Sibling Involvement, Mental Capacity Act, Supported Living, Adult Social Care, The Office of the Public Guardian, Wills and Trusts and Continuing Health Care.
To make sure you do not miss these events, we would recommend signing up to OxFSN’s mailing list here or following our page on Eventbrite where you can book on to the events.
Course length: Events range in time from 1-hour online sessions to 4-hour in person events.
Cost: Free.
Creating a Planning Ahead or All About Me Folder
OxFSN recognise that for many family carers, growing older brings with it a lot of uncertainty about who is going to support their relative when they are no longer around.
This workshop looks at what OxFSN think family carers need to consider when they start the planning ahead process as well as what we think would be useful to include in a Planning Ahead Folder.
OxFSN have created a Planning Ahead or All About Me folder to help family carers pull together all the relative information that someone would need to know should they need to step in due to an emergency, or for someone taking on the family support role. The folder can be downloaded here.
Course length: 3 hours in person.
Cost: Free.
Events Calendar
Opportunities to participate in our online and in-person training, workshops and information sharing initiatives.