PROJECT MASTER
Curriculum Developers and Trainers
Year One Report
Biopsychosocial Assessment Curriculum
Develop Service Plans Curriculum
Legal, Ethical & Practice Issues Curriculum
Year One Report
As a demonstration project, Project MASTER’s task is to research, develop, pilot, deliver and evaluate a multi-disciplinary competency based curriculum for Adult Protective Services (APS) workers. During our first year:
- We developed a formal infrastructure for Project MASTER which brought together project staff, academic advisors, subject matter experts and county APS staff to effectively and efficiently develop an advance curriculum for APS workers. Of special note was our Curriculum Advisory Committee, made up of the APS training officers from our five target counties, which provided direction to our curriculum developers and gave the APS community a role as active partners in the project.
- We determined the advanced training needs of APS workers through key informant interviews with county administrators and training need questionnaires administered to over 200 APS workers.
- We conducted a review of the applicable literature to ensure that our curriculum is based on the most current information and research available on each of the training topics.
- We developed a conceptual model that brings together the micro, mezzo and macro aspects of a specific theme/ type of APS case. To our knowledge, we are the only training project to use a conceptual model to build Adult Protective Services training modules.
- Using our conceptual model, we contracted with nationally known experts to develop a draft curriculum centered on self neglect cases. The curriculum is composed of 3 modules: Biopsychosocial Assessment, Engaging Reluctant Clients to Develop Service Plans that Work, and Legal and Ethical Issues in Self Neglect.
- We engaged the services of nationally recognized experts to deliver the curriculum for each of the training modules. Their satisfaction ratings from our pilot, and the accompanying comments, show just how effective they were:
- Dr. Irving Hellman received a rating of 4.65 (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being best). “His responsiveness to the audience was awesome!”
- Dr. Patrick Arbore received a rating of 4.85. “Dr. Arbore is an engaging and dynamic presenter.”
- Candace Heisler received a rating of 4.78. “The trainer gave an excellent presentation on information that can be very ‘dry’. She mixed it up so that my interest was kept at a high level.”
- The Project MASTER pilot training was delivered in October to 32 APS workers and their multidisciplinary partners from 6 counties. The trainees indicated that the difficulty level was appropriate for all 3 training modules and most trainees recommended that we expand each module into a two-day training because there was a lot of material to cover in a very short time. The trainees felt that all topics were relevant to APS work and they consistently told their county representatives that they would recommend this training to other APS workers.
- The Biopsychosocial Assessment Module received a satisfaction rating of 4.54 (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being best). “(I) better understand how capacity is determined.” “(I understand the) ways to differentiate between reversible and non-reversible dementia.”
- The Engaging Reluctant Clients Module received a satisfaction rating of 4.85. “I enjoyed the training. I came away feeling more in touch with the client's experience of having intervention of having APS come into their life.” (I will use this information) to train new workers re: resistance vs. fear (and) to share different techniques on how to work with a resistant client.”
- The Legal and Ethical Issues Module received a satisfaction rating of 4.81. “(The training helped me) more fully understand the legal implications of capacity. (I will) improve (my) documentation (of) case content.”
- We have developed an evaluation methodology to examine training effectiveness in transmitting knowledge and skills as well as inform future training delivery. We also collected trainee satisfaction surveys, plus delta evaluations, and trainer’s comments in order to make targeted revisions to the pilot curriculum.