We are so pleased to announce that we have confirmed our six plenary speakers for the 2015 International SRV conference. The plenary speakers (in alphabetical order) are:

• John Armstrong (AUS)

• Darcy Elks (US)

• Mary Kealy (IRE)

• Jo Massarelli (US)

• Mitchel Peters (AUS)

• Susan Thomas (US)

We will provide more details, including speaker topics and biographies, over the coming months.  For those of you who already know the SRV work of these plenary speakers, I am sure you will join our excitement at their involvement with the conference. If you have not yet heard these speakers, you can look forward to a new and inspiring learning experience.

We also want to hear your voice at the conference. I encourage you to strongly consider submitting a proposal for a concurrent session during the three day conference:

https://srvconference.com/call-for-papers/

We have received some great proposals and are looking forward to even more.

Another way to join in right now is to participate in the conversations happening on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, as we move toward this great conference.

 

Our confirmed plenary speakers to date are

• John Armstrong

• Jo Massarelli

• Darcy Elks

• Susan Thomas

Two more to come!

In conjunction with the 2015 international SRV conference, we are pleased to announce the following post-conference event: the seven day workshop entitled ‘How to function morally, coherently and adaptively in a world that is disfunctional, including its human services.’ The workshop will be held from June 15-21, 2015 at Worcester State University in Worcester, Massachusetts (US). Worcester is a little over an hour from the SRV conference location in Providence.

More details on the workshop to follow.

I am pleased to announce the 2nd pre-conference workshop to the 2015 International SRV conference to be held in Providence, RI.

Elizabeth Neuville will teach a half-day workshop, tentatively entitled: PASSING:  A Power Tool for Learning and Using SRV

Since the development of PASSING in the early 80s, as a successor to PASS and as a way to measure the quality of a human service program, it has been a source of many things: a vehicle for intense learning about SRV, a fertile ground from which many of the richest ideas and strongest leaders in services emerged, a process and a place where many saw SRV theory “come to life” in the lives of devalued people, a practicum to accompany SRV theory training, a resource for helpful feedback regarding service potency and relevance, a source of alienation for service providers who may have found the bar simply too high or the process too intense, and a source of “war stories” for a lifetime about the long and intense hours. These days, the rumors about PASSING are more fiction than fact, and it remains a powerful tool with great potential that can be used even more fully.

 

Designed for those who have not attended a PASSING workshop, all the way to those with a great deal of experience, this workshop will focus on the structure, intentions and possibilities of PASSING, and its relationship to Social Role Valorization. It will provide a study of the various formats, processes, ways and means that PASSING is currently conducted around the world. We will call upon as those with long experience, and well as those new to PASSING, to add to our conversation, talk about the ways PASSING has impacted people, and speak to its potential. 

 

We are planning to have several concurrent pre-conference workshops on June 8 and 9, 2015–immediately before the 2015 International Social Role Valorization conference in Providence, RI (US).

One of these will be a full-day event taught by the Training Institute. The workshop will focus on two interrelated topics which are highly relevant to SRV theory, training and implementation:

• ‘some of the most powerful techniques (pedagogies) for influencing and teaching people, and affecting their behavior’

• ‘effecting more positive attitudes to people who are devalued and at risk of devaluation’

Save the date! More details to follow.

Reading a shared text can be a great way to encourage learning, discussion and critical thinking about important ideas. As one way of building toward the 2015 International SRV Conference, we plan on making available a number of SRV-relevant readings that we will encourage conference participants, and others interested in SRV, to read and discuss, in an online forum and at the conference itself.

We need your help to decide which texts to read together. Please take a few minutes to complete the linked survey by December 1^st, 2014. It contains a list of all of the major articles published to date in The SRV Journal. Choose 5 articles that you think are most directly related to the conference themes (listed below). Once the survey is complete, we will post 5 articles for free on the conference website, and open the online forum for discussion.

SRV: Enriching lives through valued roles~Gaining depth and setting direction

• societally valued roles opening the door to the ‘good things of life’

• image enhancement and competency enhancement

• SRV teaching and implementation

• PASSING training and evaluation

• looking to future developments in SRV

Check out and share our first welcome message for the 2015 International Social Role Valorization conference being held in Providence, Rhode Island in the US.

More messages to come!