It has been an exciting week. On Monday, an independent ethics review board approved our research plan, and the online survey for the Government of Canada-funded Future Skills Centre project went live. 

If you haven't already responded, please take a few moments to do that now. Again, thanks to those who have already responded and our Virtual Learning Consortium of ASPECT members who helped us create the survey. 

More information can be found on our website. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me. 

Transitioning back to the office is a hot topic for many ASPECT BC members. In fact, it was one of the main topics of discussion at this week's members' meeting. Some organizations have been working in the office with the staff at full capacity for months, some have had a hybrid approach with some at home and some in the office, and others have not worked in their offices since this pandemic began. There were two issues at the heart of the discussion: the safety of those working in an environment with distressed clients or community members entering the office, and navigating the office safety when not everyone can be vaccinated.

• WorkSafe BC's policy on COVID-19 vaccinations in the workplace: https://www.worksafebc.com/en/covid-19/vaccination-and-the-workplace 
• This week's public health order for employers, workers, and students: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/health/about-bc-s-health-care-system/office-of-the-provincial-health-officer/covid-19/covid-19-pho-order-workplace-safety.pdf
• BC Human Rights Commissioner's message from April: https://bchumanrights.ca/wp-content/uploads/BCOHRC_Nov2020_Mask-Policy-Guidance_FINAL.pdf
• Legal considerations on mandatory vaccinations in the workplace: https://www.ksw.bc.ca/covid-workplace-employee-vaccination/
• Business in Vancouver article about mandatory vaccines: https://biv.com/article/2021/03/mandatory-vaccinations-unlikely-bc-workplace

Canada is not the utopia that we like to think it is. 

~ quote from a speaker at a vigil held in London, Ontario

• https://www.kairosblanketexercise.org/
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/indigenous-canada  
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/aboriginal-education
• https://www.bcia.com/events/indigenous-awareness-training-building-bridges-through-understanding-village
• https://www.songheesnation.ca/community/l-k-ng-n-traditional-territory
• https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/territorial-acknowledgements-an-interactive-introduction-tickets-155868092661
• https://www.songheesnation.ca/community/l-k-ng-n-traditional-territory
• https://www.facebook.com/kfs.bc.ca/

The BC Career Development Association held their annual awards ceremony yesterday and I'm delighted to pass on some good news about some of my colleagues.

Dr. Roberta Borgen (Neault) is an international leader in the career development field and was awarded the BCCDA Career Development Practitioner of the Year. I have worked closely with Roberta and her team at Life Strategies Ltd. to create the Values Based Leadership certificate program and continue to work with her on our Future Skills Centre research project. She has also recently published another important resource for career development practitioners called Career Development for Diverse Clients: Beyond the Basics. It is wonderful to see an honour bestowed on someone so deserving. 

ASPECT member North Island Employment Foundation Society (NIEFS) won the award for Career Development Agency of the Year. As you may know, the leader of NIEFS is also the leader of ASPECT BC  (Val Meany our President). Val has supported her staff to continually develop their career development skills evidenced by the many staff members who attend our conferences and workshops, participate in our weekly member meetings, and strive for the needs of their clients through community development initiatives. Congratulations to the NIEFS team!

Many of you will know Megan Hamlet of ETHOS Career Management Group by her webinars presented through ASPECT. When the pandemic hit, Megan and the ETHOS team quickly jumped in to provide free webinars to the sector through ASPECT helping organizations transition to online delivery. They also generously shared their online resources for free. Throughout the year as the needs of the sector progressed, Megan produced new webinar offerings for job developers and those working with employers. In the process, Megan became a bit of a sector rock star so I am delighted that the BCCDA recognized her as  Emerging Career Development Practitioner of the Year. 

Congratulations to you all. You inspire us!
 

Future Skills Centre Announcement

This week I attended a call with the Future Skills Centre (FSC) where they announced the Scaling Up Skills Development program. The FSC is further investing $25.9 million to expand on some of the projects piloted two years ago. Congratulations to the BC Immigrant Employment Council (IECBC) for the successes they have had in their FAST program who are now being given the funding to build on their success. The FAST program supports skilled immigrants in specific fields connect to the Canadian workforce pre-arrival.

IECBC CEO Patrick McKenzie presented at our Summit and even though the project was up and running for a short time, they were already seeing significant positive results. Kudos to Patrick and his team for their work. 

Report Re-Defining Essential Skills

Also this week, the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) released their new Skills for Success model providing a detailed description of the nine key skills. Their goal is to test the new model and garner feedback from the field. This is another opportunity for career practitioners to determine what fits and what doesn't within your practice. I encourage you to take a moment to review the report and submit your feedback to SRDC.
 

Our Virtual Skills for Career Development Practitioners research project, funded by the Future Skills Centre, is moving quickly through the Literature Review phase. We have created a long list of questions that we are hoping previously published research will answer. Here are a few of them:

• Did the move to virtual services exacerbate existing challenges serving clients?
• What are the new challenges since moving to virtual services? 
• Why is this research important? 
• Has the typical percentage of time given to topics changed with moving online?
• Has the move online changed delivering counselling skills, such as active listening or motivational interviewing?

• Michelle Luhr, YMCA of Greater Vancouver
• Shameemah Kalaichelvan, Progressive Intercultural Community Services (PICS) 
• Jo-Ann Baker, Community Futures North Okanagan 
• Bruce Buxton, Buxton Consulting
• Janet Evans, Triangle Community Resources
• Kyla Kershaw, Workforce Development Consulting of Northern BC
• Annette Borrows, Community Futures South Fraser & Canadian Association of Supported Employment
• TBD, Kootenay Career Development Society

Want to be involved in this project? You can respond to our online survey in June and if you have a specialized area of practice serving an underrepresented group, then you can volunteer to be a part of our facilitated focus groups in July.  Please contact me if you have any questions about the project. I'm always excited to talk about it!

Janet Morris-Reade
ASPECT CEO

Our Future Skills Centre-funding research project, Virtual Skills for Career Development Practitioners, is at full force this week with the start of our new research assistants. Welcome to Erica Thomson and Bennett King-Nyberg!

The research team, overseen by Dr. Roberta Borgen, has already started compiling articles for the literature review, and the researchers are learning everything they can about the sector.

This week I had an opportunity to address the BC Career Development Association board of directors and share the work we are doing. I was delighted to hear their offers of help to get the word out about the research project by helping us find more respondents from other areas of practice to respond to our online survey. My very ambitious goal is to receive 500 completed survey responses which would provide us with a substantial data set to support our findings. This project is a community-based project where those Career Development Professionals delivering services directly to the clients are the experts and have the opportunity for their voices to inform policy. Along with our project partners, Ethos Career Management Group, and our Virtual Learning Consortium, made up of practitioners from nine ASPECT member organizations, we will collect evidence to inform sector interventions and government funding decisions.

To those 9 CDPs from our learning consortium, you can expect to receive an invitation to our first meeting very soon. To all of you who will be participating through the online survey and/or the focus groups, we will keep you posted on our progress every week in Aspectives news. It's an exciting time, and we are moving a million miles an hour, but I am so excited to be doing this research on behalf of the sector. 

Janet Morris-Reade
ASPECT CEO

For those of you who attended our Annual General Meeting on April 7, you'll know that we re-welcomed five board members to make up our board complement of seven. These volunteers are hardworking, thoughtful, and always put the sector's needs at the forefront of every decision they make for ASPECT members. They work on committees, attend weekly member meetings and monthly board meetings, support our conference sessions, and keep me abreast of developing issues that our members may face. I am proud of the contribution that every one of them provides ASPECT and appreciative of their support of me in this position. Although we are at the end of national volunteer week, I still wanted you all to be aware of the work they do on your behalf.

Board of Directors

As numbers surge into the 3rd wave of the pandemic, our Virtual Member Discussion this week touched on what organizations are doing now and what the immediate future might look like. We discussed that there are those concerned about the AstraZenica side effects amongst our community and those who are concerned that staff within their organizations will not consent to receive the vaccine at all. The concern was how to accommodate the rising level of anxieties that the promise of the vaccine brings.

One member on the call told us how, in their remote community, an employer brought a public health expert to answer workers' concerns. The vaccine hesitancy within the group almost completely disappeared. 

One member from the March of Dimes, which has its roots in the polio outbreaks of the mid-1900s, provided a resource that their organization produced in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Called "Mission Immunity" this web page provides a ton of resources to understand the available information. Some of the questions answered on the site are:

1. Why get the shot?
2. Are we sure the vaccines are safe when they were created so quickly?
3. What if I decide not to get vaccinated?
4. With variant strains becoming dominant, will the vaccines still be effective?
5. What about long-term side effects?

Some members on the call shared that their organization's policy is to give their staff the day off to get the vaccine. This, I think, is a generous encouragement going beyond the half-day being proposed by the province.

Finally, I understand that vaccines are a charged topic for many, and I'm taking a risk writing about it in Aspectives. I know even in my own family, there are some firm opinions on both sides of the COVID-19 debate. Our common ground lies in our exhaustion with the pandemic and its effect on our lives. I hope that you will take the information that has been provided here as an act of support and encouragement rather than one of judgement.
 

Janet Morris-Reade
CEO