The Irish National Family Support Network (NFSN) is a peer led civil society organisation and is an umbrella body for 83 affiliated peer led family support groups. The NFSN has been working with UK members of AFINet since mid-2011 to develop the 5-Step Method across Ireland. In that time we have developed a self-supporting model where key people are trained in all aspects of the 5-Step model (delivery, training others to deliver it, and assessing competence and accrediting individuals). This work is ongoing (ten members of the NFSN are accredited as practitioners in adult 5-Step Method delivery; this was the first accreditation process in the 5-Step Method worldwide), and we have recently developed a bid to the European Union to continue funding further developments.
The UK members of AFINet used to offer one-off 1- or 2-day training workshops on the 5-Step method. But we are now trialling a new method of working, which, after initial input from us, is planned to lead to each country / organisation becoming much more self-sufficient in training, assessing and accrediting their own practitioners, with some relatively minimal refresher training for the trainers and some minimal ongoing quality control checks from us.
In this way of working (and we are half-way through implementing this in Ireland), we
- first train a cohort of practitioners who are committed to:
a) becoming very skilled in 5-Step work, having their competence in 5-Step Work being assess by us, and becoming accredited as 5-Step method practitioners
b) then being trained as trainers of the 5-Step method, and having their competence as trainers also assessed by us,
c) then becoming trained as assessors and accreditors of other practitioners’ 5-Step work - this first cohort (again we have so far limited this to our normal group size of 12-15) gets trained by us, and then sets about using 5-Step in practice. Sessions are digitally tape recorded, and we get the practitioners to assess their own competence using a standard assessment form. We also recommend that they get their peers (the other counsellors who have been trained by us) to also assess the recordings. Once both the practitioner and a peer have agreed that a set of 5-step recordings (usually 5 x 1 hour sessions) have reached the criteria which we have set, the recordings are then sent to us, and WE then listen to the tapes and assess using the same assessment form. This process is followed for as long as it takes for us to feel that the practitioner has reached competence (sometimes that is very fast – in the first set of recordings that are submitted – other times it takes longer).
- Once we have a group of practitioners who have been assessed as competent, we then mount a 1-2 day ‘Train the Trainers’ course, where we train these practitioners to run 5-Step method training courses in their own right. These trained trainer-practitioners then each run two 5-Step training courses, each for 12-15 practitioners, and these training courses are video-taped, and the trainers competence as trainers are then assessed, first by themselves and their peers, and then again by us.
- Once the trainers have reached competence as trainers (having already been accredited as competent as practitioners) we then set about training the same group to become assessors.
- The idea of course is to make the whole process self-supporting, instead of having everything revolve around us as the holders of all of the training, assessment and accreditation knowledge and skill.
This whole process is much more time-consuming than simply us arriving and training a group of people – but it does address quality control, competence, fidelity, and sustainable development.
