2016-2017
Among Friends and the UCEDD at OHSU piloted a sexuality education training to gauge the community’s needs regarding social-sexual issues. The response was overwhelming. It was beyond evident that professionals in the field of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities felt a dire need for more education, support, guidance and skills to address behaviors they were faced with every day.
2018
Among Friends, the UCEDD at OHSU, and OTAC (now a program of The ARC of Oregon) designed the framework of the certification program and got to work building the content and the delivery systems. During this year we mapped the trajectory of the three tiers and completed the first tier, along with all of the “back end” systems and data collection. It was time-consuming and exhausting at times, but in the end it felt worth all that hard work!
2019
We launched our very first official Tier 1 in May of 2019. It was an in-person training held in Portland, Oregon. We had an incredible group of 26 and our time together was so fulfilling! We held a second in-person Tier 1 in September of 2019 that was equally inspiring!
In between these first two sessions of Tier 1, we were planning, designing, and building Tier 2. You’ve heard the phrase, “building the plane while you’re flying it”, right? Well that is exactly what we were doing!
2020
In January of 2020, we held our third session of Tier 1 and we had three more scheduled for later that year. And then, as you already know, the pandemic disrupted all of the groundwork we had laid. As it became clear that the pandemic shut-downs were not going to be over in a matter of a few weeks or a month, we realized all the work we had done was going to be lost if we didn’t figure out how to pivot and offer the entire training and certification program online. So, we spent a great deal of the remainder of the year redesigning Tier 1 for an online option.
Interestingly enough, in order to make the 5-month Tier 2 cohort experience more accessible, we had already designed it to be online. That’s how we managed to have our first graduation of Tier 2 participants who started in February and completed their cohort in July of 2020.
2021-2024
We are currently updating the rest of our story and will be posting it soon! We hope you'll come back to hear where we are today!
Tier 1 pre/post test data
Averages calculated on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being “not at all confident” and 10 being “highly confident”
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Before Training: 5.80
After Training: 8.07
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Before Training: 5.38
After Training: 8.70
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Before Training: 5.50
After Training: 8.28
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Before Training: 5.17
After Training: 8.53
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Before Training: 6.15
After Training: 8.54
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Before Training: 6.71
After Training: 8.22
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Before Training: 6.02
After Training: 8.96
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Before Training: 6.06
After Training: 8.44
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Before Training: 5.71
After Training: 8.85