TD2626

Note: This session is capped at 84 participants

Total Workshop Time: 2 Hours

Pre-requisites: None

Description:

This interactive conversation focuses on our personal beliefs about the abilities of people with disabilities and ways to improve performance. 

Three separate modules/activities:

• Perspectives - recognizing personal beliefs and challenging them.
• Fact or Fiction - dispelling myths and highlighting basic disability employment law.
• Taking Emotion out of Emotional Disabilities - exploring the effects of our reactions to persons with emotional disabilities and focusing on ways to accommodate them in the workplace.   

Participants will gain awareness of their own beliefs and biases and how this impacts the work environment.  Through this process, participants will gain confidence and new strategies for accommodating workers. 

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will become aware that each person with a disability is an individual and that the diagnosis is only a label. Each person is different with different abilities, symptoms and interests. 
• Participants will gain knowledge about accommodations that can be used to support performance.  In addition, basic disability etiquette will be discussed and why inclusion benefits the work culture.  
• Participants will learn of resources available to support persons with disabilities.

Facilitated by: Beth Sullivan, VA Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS)