Good Company Life Mastery Skills Training "disabled skills" "new life skills"

Good Company Pacific, an Auckland-based community education group, has developed a comprehensive skills training for neurally disabled people, their families and caregivers.

New Life Skills is a values-based community programme designed to generate independence and self-esteem in the daily lives of participants, as they learn self-maintenance and life-enriching skills in Communication, Socialisation, Work, Creativity, and Recreation.

Based on positive results from two exploratory workshops offered in November 2001 and April 2002, New Life Skills is presented by a Good Company Pacific team of four or five specialised professionals working with a group of 16-20 participants in the Auckland region, through six weekly training modules. This balanced weekly programme -- a flexible arrangement of small group discussions, individual exercises, group activities and field trips -- is particularly designed to fulfill key directives in the New Zealand Disability Strategy: to facilitate the ease of an individual's access to nurture and exchange in physical, cultural and mental environments, thereby helping to change perceptions about epilepsy, especially in the wider community.

New Life Skills is essentially a partnership between participants, the facilitators (Good Company Pacific), and the Epilepsy Association, designed so that the content and dimensions of the training are responsive to the emerging needs and feedback of the participants.

Life's difficulties are much the same for all of us, with or without a "disability." Among the myriad challenges and events we encounter daily, epilepsy is here seen as a positive catalyst for personal growth and community enrichment.

The New Life Skills training demonstrates and affirms that "people are dynamic beings," always capable of change, and of learning to better manage our changes.

In offering New Life Skills, Good Company Pacific is poised to work effectively with all relevant parties, and envisions support and participation from the full spectrum of the disability community. The moderate costs of the programme represent a reasonable "seed" investment toward improving the personal and social well-being of many disabled individuals, who will then be skilled in positively influencing others in their families and community.