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Facilitators should arrive early (one hour is recommended) to ensure that all is well and to be there to greet early arrivals. Should mistakes and/or changes occur despite your vigilant attention to detailed arrangements (it can happen) you will have to rely on your resourcefulness. Be calm and decisive, people are quite adaptable and understanding.
The objectives for each session should be written clearly on a flip chart displayed in front of the tables and facilitators should review these with the group at the beginning of each session.
As people arrive for the first session, the facilitator(s) will greet them and give each one a place card and folder. Not only does this makes participants feel welcome, but it is also a good method to help the facilitator(s) to remember names and faces. The participants will take their folders home with them at the end of the first session but should bring them back for each workshop.
The facilitator(s) will distribute information at each session to be included in the folders. Extra copies of the agendas can be set out on the table before the participants arrive for the first session. Although there will be copies of the agenda in the folders, also having a few visible helps participants to quickly identify the format of the information. After that, they will be handed out at the end of the session for the next week.
Begin the workshops on time even if everyone hasn't arrived. This will encourage people to be on time (recognizing that for caregivers, this can be a challenge) and it shows appreciation for those who have arrived. If there are latecomers, be sure (at the first session) to set their folders and place cards at a place at the table before you begin so that when they arrive they will immediately become part of the group. Their delay, in all likelihood, was unavoidable.
Begin with Module One.
Notes to Facilitators:
The books and videos catalogue from the Caregiver Resource Library, Nova Scotia Centre on Aging, Mount Saint Vincent University, can be available at the workshop as a resource. The Nova Scotia Centre on Aging offers the catalogue on-line as well. You can access this at http://www.msvu.ca/nsca/library.asp
Please refer to Appendix 6 for the topics included in the Library resources
Material in this section was excerpted from Care for the Caregiver: How To Replicate the Program (1992), Mary o'Brien, R. Way-Clark and L. Learned, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax.
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