Professional Interpreting Services in Community and Public Services

Leadership Open Mic - Fishbowl Discussion with Ahmad Maaliji & Angela Sasso

The session will present and focus on the importance of qualified interpreting services in the community and public services sectors. Many organizations still assign untrained bilinguals to act as interpreters for various sessions and events, not recognizing that bilingual ability is only one of the many professional competencies’ interpreters require in their work. While volunteers may have the language skills, they lack the professional training, knowledge of standards of practice, ethics, and systems. This session will also share the work of the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) in translation, interpreting and related technologies, and its publications centered on the interpreting field.

Participants will have the opportunity to share their experiences, ask questions, and will gain a better understanding of the importance of professional interpreting in the community and public services sectors. In addition, participants will learn about key resources available, and take away valuable information on how to include qualified language services in their respective organizations.

Assessing Social-Emotional Skills for Workplace Success

Leadership Panel with Pam Khinda, Paul Brinkhurst & Kristin Vandegriend                   

Job seekers need to demonstrate a wide range of soft skills to stand out to employers. The Employability Skills Assessment Tool (ESAT) supports learners in assessing and developing their social and emotional skills through self-assessment and instructor observation. Learn more about ESAT and how it is being used at Vancouver Community College and across Canada. 

Set-Up for Success

Managers Workshop with Terry Deakin

Do you know how people who experience barriers to employment continue to be underrepresented in our evolving labour market? And they are also most likely to be underserved in our employment programs. Set-Up for Success provides you with tools and strategies to add to any program to facilitate personal growth and development toward a successful labour market attachment.

Preventing the Spin Cycle: In Motion & Momentum+

Leadership Workshop with Donnalee Bell & Trina Stanford    

In Canada, the policy push in public career and employment services to get clients as quickly as possible into jobs and training has created a spin-cycle. People with pre-employment skills needs are moved too soon to training and/or jobs and find themselves in a costly revolving door cycling from the labour market to service over and over. In 2015, the Canadian Career Development Foundation, with the Government of New Brunswick, moved to stop the spin with an innovative program called In Motion & Momentum+. This session will explore the “now for something completely different” approach taken to revolutionize career and employment services in New Brunswick and the process of scaling this innovation across Canada to support the more than 85% of people coming to service with pre-employment needs.

In this session, you will:

• Learn how the approach taken with IM&M+ has impacted participants, organizations, communities, and governments.
• Understand how building an evidence-informed practice can support the scaling of programs.
• Increase understanding of how IM&M+’s approach has the potential to revolutionize service for a range of audiences (e.g., people living with a disability, Indigenous peoples, youth, long-time unemployed, refugees, immigrants, and people who have been involved with the justice system).

SkillingUp - Building Digital Equity and Financial Security

Managers Workshop with Lisa Livingston

SkillingUp, a partnership between MODC, Microsoft, and CIBC that invests in all stages of employment, including one to one pre-job/career and post-job/career support. This includes free digital literacy training, career essential training and Microsoft certifications as well as mentoring and networking opportunities and job development support. The program supports job seekers to increase their employability in tech and “tech-enabled” jobs.

Indigenous Skills for Success Journey

Leadership Workshop with Danica Isherwood & Francesca De Bastiani      

Explore the updated Indigenous Skills for Success Journey Refresh Project. The interactive and engaging workshop facilitates connection with like-minded colleagues while presenter-led activities guide you to put the skills framework into practice with relevant scenarios. Includes the opportunity to try out some exciting new learner activities and come away with new tools to add to your toolkit.

Skills for Success: Assessing Transferable Skills

Managers Presentation by Noah Arney

Supporting the self-assessment of transferable skills means that clients are more able to develop themselves and be open to transformational experiences. This session will present a subjective reports assessment based on the Skills for Success framework (2021), designed to assess skills that are easily displayed in practice, but difficult to assess outside of practice.

Using Digital Tools to Boost Learning and Participation

Managers Presentation by Giselle Shangi-Ellis & Janessa Stuerle

In this presentation, Giselle and Janessa will explore some of our favourite digital tools. They consider the application of the tools in the career development field and introduce attendees to a gamified approach to learning. These experienced Instructional Designers will demonstrate how they implement digital tools and resources in a way that removes barriers, allowing all clients to fully participate.

Relational Effectiveness: The Client as Your Compass

Leadership Workshop with Desiree Carlson & Cassie Taylor

Career development leaders are increasingly being called to support complex, diverse, and multi-barriered clients within our dynamic employment landscape. At the same time, they’re tasked with streamlining service provision with an equally diverse staff often new to the sector. This workshop calls for a refocusing on cultivating strong relational competencies grounded in sensitivity, dignity, and understanding through an authentic, compassionate, and empathic approach. Leave equipped to create spaces for collaboration and growth for yourself, your staff, and clients.

Employer Support: The Pathway to Job Seeker Success

Managers Workshop with Johanna Currie

Join us as we look at employers through a new lens and discover the key to successful employer connections. Learn to leverage your existing skills and apply analysis tools to identify value-adds that will have a long-term impact on employers. Explore how adding value and building relationships through employer support leads to fulfilling and meaningful work for all job seekers.

Medicine Wheel - How to Use for Job Search Activity

Presentation by Coreen Jenner

The workshop involves group interaction as well as using handouts to have participants develop their own life and how it relates to them. In this workshop, participants will learn how to use the wheel to engage in positive job search activities to share with clients.

Sector Sustainability: Leader Mentorship Discussion

Leadership Discussion Panel with Tony Kirschner

This session is for leaders and emerging leaders and delves into the intricacies of leadership transitions within organizations. In this fireside chat-style presentation, we'll explore best and worst-case scenarios for leadership handovers and provide insights on long-term transition planning. Our expert presenter will share his experiences in recruitment, shedding light on ideal competencies sought after in future leaders and offering invaluable tips to smoothen the recruitment process. We'll also discuss the critical qualities to mentor staff for leadership positions and reveal innovative strategies clients have employed to fill roles when the perfect fit isn't available.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Understand the best and worst-case scenarios in leadership transitions and their implications for organizations.
2. Discover strategies for long-term transition planning to prepare for leadership changes 5 or 10 years in advance.
3. Gain insights into the ideal competencies for effective recruitment, along with tips to streamline the process and identify potential leaders within your organization.

Career Development Professional Centre Training: A Fireside Chat

Leadership Panel with Roberta Borgen, Seanna Quressette & Candy Ho

Earlier this year, the new Career Development Professional Centre unveiled a game-changing free training, sculpting the essence of working in career and employment services, no matter where or who you serve. Join us for this fireside chat to gain insights directly from the trainers who not only spotlighted knowledge gaps but also gained fresh perspectives from their learners. Dive into their aspirations for elevating professional development in our field!

Strategic Plan Implementation

Leadership Workshop with JP Baker

Translate your goals into action! Good strategic plans don’t just live on a shelf. They live through effective operational planning and ground-level decisions about programming, finances, hiring, and more. In this workshop, we will explore the different ways that strategic plans are converted into actions and decisions. This may involve structural changes, leadership support, community engagement, resource allocation, and capacity building. It may also involve operational planning and embedding values into organizational processes and policies.  

Reimagining Organizations in a Climate Change Disrupted World

Presentation by Arden Henley & Ingrid Kastens

Reimagining Organizations invites organizations to re-envision their organizations in a world disrupted by the impacts of climate change. It provides a summary of the recent findings of climate scientists and identifies several probable scenarios that organizations in BC will face over the next 3-5 years. The presentation concludes with steps that organizations can take to prepare for this uncertain future.

Buy With Impact: A National Call to Action
Managers workshop with Charlotte Lewthwaite

Every purchase has an economic, environmental, cultural, and social impact, whether intended or not. With social suppliers and purchasers at all levels in the marketplace, social procurement is redefining how goods and services are bought and sold. We invite community, public sector and private sector to come learn about social procurement and how you can buy and sell with impact.

We will feature leading social and sustainable procurement examples best practice from across Canada. Come learn about simple steps and tools you can take to leverage your purchasing power for community good.

The collective effort of leveraging social value from purchasing has a powerful and positive ripple effect in our communities. By redefining how goods and services are bought and sold, we are taking back control from the invisible hand of capitalism. As we build a social value marketplace, we are unleashing the transformative power of the marketplace - to buy and sell with impact.

First Impressions Count: Re-Imagining the Intake Process

Leadership Presentation by Annika Laale & Rebecca McCarthy                 

Most employment services have intake processes, but are they effective? Intake is a critical opportunity to build trust and engagement, ensuring the individual’s strengths and needs inform service delivery. It is the lynchpin of quality service. Come and explore a strength-based process that also captures meaningful data on the client’s career development journey from the first meeting.

Color Spectrums - Personality Styles Workshops

Presentation by Coreen Jenner

Colour Spectrums is a personality model presented to groups in an interactive and entertaining workshop format. Participants sort the 4 colourfully illustrated attribute cards to identify their natural Colourspectrums - a combination of the 4 developmental areas of personality.  Participants are guided through a process of self-reflection, group discussions, and activities to discover and celebrate diverse personality strengths.

Our Role in the Social Determinants of Mental Health

Leadership Workshop with Catherine Hajnal & Seanna Quressette

We will explore the social determinants of mental health as they intersect with the work of career development. Participants will leave with the beginnings of map of trauma-informed referrals. This will include an exploration of the continuum of crisis to prevention and our role along that continuum. Through discussion, learn how to contribute to the mental health of clients. 

Consultation: Informing the Care Economy Workforce Working Group

By Scott Barillaro

Join us for a collaborative session with an introduction to the Care Economy Workforce Working Group, a Social Services Sector Roundtable sub-group. Gain insights into the work being done on your behalf, including its objectives and ongoing initiatives. Participants will engage in interactive table discussions, addressing crucial questions that will shape our direction. Representatives from each group will share findings, providing invaluable input. We will collate feedback, ensuring that the collective voice informs our future steps. Your participation will play a pivotal role in our journey forward!

Ministry Update

By Joanna White & Karen Blackman