At the end of January, Colleen Knudson the International Contacts person from NAAP in the US joined me on a Skype call to Sylvie Silver in the UK.
Sylvie Silver is the National Activities providers Executive Director. She moved from working in aged care, where she realised a need to provide meaningful activities to elderly people, was missing, to the Registered Charity that is NAPA.
From their web page-
Sylvie is the Executive Director of NAPA responsible for all aspects of the charities work. NAPA is recognised as the ‘thought leader’ around Activity Provision and Sylvie is the key influencer in achieving this.
Sylvie‘s hands on experience was gained working in a nursing home for older people and prior to that with Adults with Learning Disabilities. Since then she has worked with, and trained, hundreds of care staff from senior management to grassroots workers to raise the profile of the importance of meaningful engagement and a life full of love and laughter.
NAPA has over 3000 members, mostly in aged care but they have members that also work with Disabilities including Assisted Disabilities Hospices, Aged Care Hospices
They typically get approx. 120 people to their 1 day Conferences usually held in London. In the future she is hoping to be able to hold the NAPA conferences in Wales, Ireland and Scotland as well as the one in London.
She has recently recorded a program, the 3rd one she has done, for the Aged Care Channel called – Activity Provisions for Dementia Care.
Sylvie also told us about the NAPA Challenge for 2018 which aims at bringing the surrounding communities into the Aged Care facilities
From the NAPA Web page-
NAPA challenge 2018 – A food journey around the Commonwealth
You can take part anytime between 18-25 April 2018. You might want to focus on Saturday 21st April which is also Care Home Open Day and has a theme of Communities Near and Far. The Queen also has her 92nd birthday on the 21stApril if you want to celebrate that too.
The NAPA Challenge couldn’t be simpler. Choose at least three Commonwealth countries to focus on and then complete the 3‘P’s to be in with a chance of winning £500
Provide food that will encourage conversations
Persuade folk to move and mobilise more by setting up unusual places to ‘visit’ either within the home or in the community
Post materials around that will tap into memories linked to the Commonwealth.
NAPA has also been busy writing training packages for their UK Government Aged care Inspectors.
Sylvie has also said she would love to attend our DRTA National Conference sometime but has for this year at least said she would love to give a short presentation, via Skype to our 2018 Conference. Sylvie is also writing an article to go in our monthly newsletter in the near future.
On Monday the 5th of Feb, Orquidea Tamayo, the VP of NZSDRT paid my facility where I work in Port Broughton, SA, a surprise visit. She had of course spoken to us many times over the last 2 years via Skype when we did the Choir Concerts to her facility, but she had never met any of our residents face to face. So, needless to say my residents were thrilled to meet her and her husband, Louis, in person. I showed her around the Barunga Homes facility taking her to meet many members of the choir as well.
Also in NZ, Beth Sizemore in Dunedin, emailed me telling me how they were suffering through a heat wave of 33 degrees. The next day they were on flood watch and unfortunately the Radius Fulton facility suffered very bad flooding forcing many of the resident to be moved to other facilities around the NZ South Island and most of the staff being put off work until further notice while the repairs are being carried out. She said she’d get back in touch with me when things were back to normal.
I have kept Colleen Knudson from NAAP and Anne Richard from NCTRC in the US up to date with the date changes for our conference and will fill them in with a confirmed date when I can. Colleen is very interested in attending our conference next year and Anne is very certain that she will come out to Australia and attend the conference in Melbourne this year.
Orquidea from Auckland, Jerome Singleton from Canada and Anne Richard from the US sent out best wishes for a Happy International TR Month to all the TR practitioners around the world and the members of the TR Coalition, including myself, Kylie and Nicole Peel in the past week.
Shinichi Nagata, from the International TR Coalition in the US also sent out a call for papers for the Therapeutic Recreation Journal (TRJ) which will have a special issue on global and cultural perspectives on Therapeutic Recreation.
Submission deadline is October 1st, 2018.
Darren Robinson
DRTA South Australian Representative
DRTA International Liaison Projects Team leader.