Welcome to What about me? A personal development course for carers in Wales.
When we look in the mirror we see our reflection. In everyday life we sometimes talk about being in a ‘reflective mood’, and we tend to reflect on things that don’t have an obvious or straightforward answer. We might take time to reflect on something to consider it in more detail, in greater depth and in a new way.
Self-reflection is thinking about yourself to gain greater self-awareness and understanding. Conscious or unconscious it involves our thoughts, ideas, experience and knowledge. The process of reflection might be pleasurable or uncomfortable, or a mixture of both.
Reflection is a way of working on what we know already to create new knowledge and understanding. In this way it can help us recognise and appreciate skills and abilities that we have but often overlook. We can reflect at any time in our lives to help us examine our feelings around a whole range of experiences. It can help us review our decision making and motivations and for that reason it is used in learning and workplaces in relation to personal development and career planning.
While reflection can be uncomfortable it can also be liberating and empowering. Developing a better understanding of ourselves and our situation will enable us to move forward.
The diverse experiences of carers have informed the development of this course. Some are in a position where their caring role is changing. For others their role stays the same, but they are finding new ways to cope.
James, a carer who also works with a local carer service in Wales, sums up the skills and qualities he’s seen in carers:
Carers come from all walks of life and some have been caring from a young age while others may become a carer later in life. Many people bring pre-existing skills to caring, but being a carer can develop and highlight skills and attributes that often aren’t recognised. Carers are often extremely organised, reliable and very good at handling pressure. They can quite often identify other people’s emotion, just at a glance.
This course is intended to support carers to reflect on what their skills and strengths are, their goals and how they can achieve them.
By working through What about me? you’ll achieve:
a clearer understanding of your experiences as a carer and also in your wider roles
an understanding of the various skills that you have developed as a carer and in your wider roles and how these are transferable to other situations
an appreciation of personal qualities developed through your caring role
a chance to think about your goals and aspirations for the future
an idea of how you might work towards these goals and where you may get help and support
the ability to use information technology (IT) to carry out reflective activities in writing and communicating
the ability to use the internet to find information useful to you
the ability to explore and use new ways of expressing ideas.
We hope that you’ll find this course useful in reflecting on experiences that have some importance to you, and that it will help you with future choices or decision making.
What about me? contains a mixture of personal reflection, ideas about how we learn from reflection and activities for you to try out for yourself.
It features case studies of carers with many different experiences of employment, education and caring. These case studies highlight a range of personal journeys and explore the circumstances and issues encountered as a result of their caring role.
There are five sessions within the course that include a range of activities to help you reflect on the following:
In each of the five sessions you will be invited to relate your own experiences to the ones illustrated and try out the individual tasks. Each section will take you about an hour to complete.
There is also a Find out more section at the end of the course, with information links and contact details for further resources and support.
You can complete the activities in a couple of ways:
Or
My Reflection Log is designed to be downloaded and saved to your computer or memory stick. You may find it helpful to do this now. It can then be opened and added to as required – but don’t forget to save it every time you use it. If you prefer, you can print out the Log and use it to write down your thoughts.
Whichever option you choose, you will find it helpful to make notes either in your Log or in a notebook as you work through the course.
There is a range of ways in which this course can be used. For example, you can work through these activities on your own or with a mentor, or in a group with a facilitator. If you are working in a face-to-face group, for instance, you might work on one session at a time over a number of weeks. You can also share your comments and ideas with others online, through Facebook for example.
If at any point you feel the course has brought difficult emotions, then you can visit Carers.org to find out where your nearest local support service is or to talk to someone online.
When people reflect together this can make it easier to discuss things and you can get ideas from each other. But members of the group need to have confidence in each other and need to be committed to respecting each other’s ideas, beliefs and experiences. They must agree to do this and also not to discuss outside the group anything that members say. No member ever needs to discuss anything that they do not want to talk about. Each one decides what they want to contribute.
If you are working through this course in a group, either online or face to face, take some time now to agree the rules you will follow to respect each other and ensure confidentiality.
Session 1: Defining myself and how I feel about my present situation
What about me? was developed by Carers Trust Wales and OU in Wales. It is based on and adapted from content developed by Lindsay Hewitt and Christine McConnell of The Open University in Scotland in collaboration with Bridges Programmes.
We are hugely grateful to the carers and staff from North East Wales Carers Information Service (NEWCIS) for sharing their stories and testing out the course activities. We hope you find something in their experiences that speaks to you as well.
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.
The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this course:
Course image: © mbolina/iStockphoto.com
Figure 1: © benimage/iStockphoto.com
Figure 2: © Chris Schmidt/iStockphoto.com
Video/audio: © The Open University
Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
Click the link above for further information on:
– further study in Welsh related to this subject
– related study content from The Open University
– this topic and free course materials on OpenLearn
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Next: Session 1: Defining myself and how I feel about my present situation