The Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre just finished its first Virtual Clinical Services Regional. Clinical Services Regional events were in-person gatherings since 2008, but with such a positive reaction to the virtual component this year, we will explore continuing online events in the future.
Executive Director Charles Cochrane started the first day of sessions with an opening prayer. Then Rachel North Wavey, Speech and Language Pathologist, reminded us that the work we do is always for the children, and as long as we keep them in mind, we will do good work for them.
North Wavey shared the Clinical Services Department’s history and spoke on how diverse and expansive the department has become since 1999. “Initially, the Clinical Regionals were held to provide additional training to the clinical therapy assistants (such as the speech-language educational assistants) from the communities that we work with.” North Wavey continued, “It is like upgrading their current skills from previous trainings. We, as clinicians, depend a lot on the educational assistants who are assigned to our programs. They are the ones who help us deliver the services to the students. That’s why we focus on continuing to build their skills.”
North Wavey stated, “The Virtual Clinical Regional (has) expanded to include not only the assistants but also classroom teachers and parents. This gave us an opportunity to reach more people from the communities! The more people that we reach, the better chance the strategies and supports that we offer would reach the children that require it.”
This gathering provided educational assistants, therapy assistants, classroom teachers, and parents the opportunity to receive information on the services we provide within the MFNERC Special Education Clinical Services Department. Strategies and resources were provided, and all recorded sessions remain available for participants to go back to for a month. These recorded sessions are a significant advantage of the virtual component of the event.
As an organizer, North Wavy added, “I felt the most success was that I left everything to the Digital Learning & Development team to help us get the virtual sessions going; they made it a reality. We could not have done it without them.”
Congratulations again to the Clinical Services and Digital Learning Environment Teams!
