Training Programs

Click HERE to see Online Training Opportunities offered by the Southeast RCEP

The Southeast RCEP faculty strives to maintain a close working relationship with state rehabilitation agency personnel and other entities providing service support to agency clientele in response to common and recurring Human Resource Development needs. The needs assessment function is an ongoing process in order to determine education and/or training content that improves personnel knowledge and skills that ultimately yield quality outcomes beneficial to persons with disabilities. Human Resource Development concepts, philosophy, techniques, and strategies are used to plan, develop, and manage all resources to achieve specified goals and assure issues of accountability.

Southeast RCEP training programs are all designed using familiar methodology to guide learning environments. These noted critical elements are applied to all training initiatives:

1. OUTCOME__ (What do we want to achieve?)
2. INFORMATION__ (What do we have to say?)
3. PRESENTATION__ (What is the best way to say it?)
4. RESOURCES__ (What will be required to get it done?), and
5. EVALUATION__ (What was achieved?)

Some of the education, training, or development content areas offered by the Southeast RCEP include:

1. Americans with Disabilities Act
2. Basic Counseling Skills
3. Basic Marketing Skills Development
4. Basic Counseling Skills
5. Business Enterprise Program Issues
6. Career Development Issues for Consumers
7. Client Assistance Program Issues
8. Communication Styles and Skills
9. Comprehensive System of Personnel Development (CSPD) Issues
10. Coping with Difficult Behavior
11. Cultural and Ethnic Disability Issues
12. Developing Employer Relations
13. Diagnostic Interviewing Skills
14. Effective Communication Skills
15. Effective Employer Relationships
16. Elements of Negotiation
17. Employment Initiatives
18. Empowerment and Consumer Issues
19. Ethical Case Management Practices
20. Ethical Practices in Rehabilitation
21. Functional Assessment/Eligibility Determination
22. Human Resource Development (HRD) Issues
23. Implementing (New) Rehabilitation Amendments
24. Independent Living Issues
25. Intake Interviewing Skills
26. Internet Utilization Skills for Rehabilitation Professionals
27. Issues of Cultural Diversity
28. Job Development: ADA Connections
29. Job Development: Job Placement
30. Medical Aspects of disAbility (I), (II), (III)
31. Negotiation Skill Development
32. New Counselor Orientation Training
33. Opportunity to Make Informed Choice
34. Orientation to Deafness
35. Peer Counseling Skill Development
36. Professional Ethics in Rehabilitation
37. Professional Rehabilitation Assistant Training (I), (II), (III)
38. Program Evaluation Issues
39. Psychosocial Aspects of Disability
40. Recruitment and Retention Initiatives
41. Rehabilitation Caseload Management
42. Rehabilitation Consumer Empowerment Issues
43. Rehabilitation Practices with Psychiatric Disorders
44. Rehabilitation Teacher Training
45. Resilience Training for Rehabilitation Professionals
46. Self-Employment Skill Development
47. Specific Learning Disabilities
48. Supervisory Coaching Informed Choice
49. Supported Employment Strategies
50. Team Building Activities
51. Technology and Accommodations
52. Transition from School-to-Work
53. Traumatic Brain Injury
54. Vocational Counseling and Guidance
55. Welfare-to-Work Reform
56. Workforce Investment Act

These workshops/programs reflect individualized State needs for various education, training, and development functions. Often, rehabilitation organizations request "learning on demand" for specific and individualized program content.

During the project year July 1, 1999 through June 30, 2000, a total of sixty-six (66) state and regional education, training, or technical assistance functions were completed. A total of two-thousand, five hundred, eighty-three (2,583) rehabilitation (or rehabilitation related) personnel benefited from these activities. More importantly, we must assume that a larger number of people with disABILITIES gained from the Southeast RCEP learning interventions.

Program Descriptions

Effective Communication Skills
This two (2) day workshop highlights basic aspects of human communication. It involves changing and improving listening skills, providing clear feedback, and asking questions that enhance the conversation. The focus is on transfer of meaning to another/others.

Ethical Practices in Rehabilitation
This conference presentation will focus on ethics and rehabilitation. Anyone working in a professional manner, where human services are involved, is bound by both stated and unstated ethical codes and standards. The rehabilitation professional, then, in rehabilitation fields is guided by ethics. This brief training course in ethics will assist the rehabilitation professional to further the understanding of their responsibility to ethical behaviors in dealing with consumers or clients. In this session it will be understood that regardless of the designator the subject of one's professional concern is always a PERSON and not a case, nor a file, nor a number. The focus will be on the rehabilitation professional.

Internet Utilization Skills for Rehabilitation Professionals
This workshop creates an environment for rehabilitation professionals to examine and expand on knowledge basics of accessing and utilizing the Internet for professional purposes. The purpose of this training is to introduce participants to the basics of accessing and utilizing web-based resources for professional purposes. The objectives for the training include, demonstrating knowledge and skill gains related to utilizing the tools and techniques for accessing and using Internet/World Wide Web (WWW) resources, demonstrate knowledge and skill gains in accessing national, regional, state, and local websites that include disability related issues, and create a professional electronic library to access disability related resources online. The focus will be on the rehabilitation counselor.

Medical Aspects of disAbility I
This series of medical training begins as a two (2) day workshop providing a focus on medical terminology, disease, conditions, and disability. Participant focus is on rehabilitation agency personnel, especially counselors. Medical Aspects II and III complete this series of workshops.

Medical Aspects of disAbility II
This two (2) day training is the second level of three workshops with a continued focus on learning medical terminology and increased awareness of numerous body systems and related diseases. The primary focus of this training is for rehabilitation counselor utilization when assisting consumers.

Medical Aspects of disAbility III
As the third workshop in the Medical Aspects of disAbility series, this training occurs over a five (5) day period. The primary focus is to assist rehabilitation counselors with application of medical knowledge to the rehabilitation caseload consumer.

Opportunity to Make Informed Choice Online Training Program
This online training program provides a focus on definitions, concepts, and legislative policy as such relates to implementation and practice of informed choice. Demonstration projects suggest information for rehabilitation counselor roles and responsibilities including IPE and case recording/documentation. Participants complete the training in three (3) weeks.

Professional Ethics in Rehabilitation Online Training Program
This online training workshop is designed to provide rehabilitation professionals with increased skills for dealing with ethical dilemmas encountered in the caseload management process. Designed in a 6-week (module) format, the workshop provides activities and information that assist professionals in decision making processes during the rehabilitation process. It is specifically designed to prepare professionals to more systematically draw on their personal values, the values of their agencies, the values of their consumers, their code of professional ethics, and case information when making ethical decisions. The focus will be on rehabilitation counselors.

Psychosocial Aspects of Disability
This workshop will focus on persons with disabilities that often face challenges due to societal attitudes and myths about individuals with disabilities, barriers, and access to resources. The purpose of this training is to provide the rehabilitation professional with an overview of psychosocial issues and societal trends facing people with disabilities. Highlighted rehabilitation topics will include major psychosocial aspects of disability, definitions (historical and conceptual) of disability and handicaps, stages and theories of adjustment to disability and the impact of myths, attitudes, and language on individuals with disabilities. The focus will be on the rehabilitation professional.

Rehabilitation Caseload Management
This workshop is designed to increase self-awareness of rehabilitation counselors as managers of caseloads. A major goal is to explore the limits imposed of caseload management and integrate the concepts learned in the training into a positive/proactive approach to managing the overall caseload management process. This workshop creates a learning environment for rehabilitation professionals that assist in the overall expected outcome of the integration of improved and/or new caseload management techniques into personal actions within the rehabilitation service delivery system. The focus will be on the rehabilitation counselor.

Rehabilitation Practices with Psychiatric Disorders
This training workshop will blend a clinical, rehabilitation, and consumer perspective on the vocational rehabilitation of people with psychiatric disabilities/disorders. Highlighted rehabilitation topics will include alliance building, personalizing, vocational assessment and planning, using personal support for education and employment along with teamwork strategies within the community mental health system. The focus will be on rehabilitation counselors.

Resilience Training for Rehabilitation Professionals
This workshop will assist rehabilitation professionals to identify the resilience skills necessary to manage stress in both their professional and personal lives. The skills that will be covered include: identifying non-resilient thoughts and analyzing their impact on emotions and behaviors, recognizing non-resilient thinking, uncovering underlying beliefs, evaluating the usefulness of personal “should” statements, getting more accurate about causes of adversity, getting accurate about implications of adversity, and challenging beliefs that lead to non-resilient thinking and procrastination. The focus will be on rehabilitation professionals.

Vocational Counseling and Guidance
This workshop places emphasis on providing rehabilitation professionals with information and tools that may be used to assist clients in exploring vocational interests, aptitudes and abilities; thereby creating long-term career choices. In this workshop rehabilitation professionals will explore career theories, assessment tools, and career planning within a model context, and apply this information to the career goals of their clients. The focus will be on the rehabilitation counselor.

Contact the
Southeast RCEP

A534 Bailey Education Complex
Knoxville, TN 37996-3452
Phone: (865) 974-8111
Fax: (865) 974-8674
Email: hmoore2@utk.edu