Cert in Intellectual Disability Practice – L5

Earning the Certificate in Intellectual Disability Practice will ensure you satisfy the requirement for a Level 5 qualification which organisations are increasingly demanding from people who want to work as care assistants. It also provides the perfect educational foundation for people who want to progress their career in social care.

The course will provide you with the knowledge and practical skills required to deliver person centred services to people with intellectual disability. During it you will study:

• What a person centred approach is
• Where it comes from
• How to use it
• Its impact on practitioners and service provision
• The opportunities and benefits it offers services users

Learning Objectives

After completing the certificate you will:

• Understand what intellectual disability is
• Appreciate the tasks that need to be performed if you want to empower persons with an intellectual disability to make positive life and lifestyle choices
• Understand the issues practitioners face when facilitating a person to live an independent life in the community
• Have the knowledge and skills to actively support persons with an intellectual disability in the different phases of their lives
• Be able to meaningfully contribute to developing strategies that will them develop a range of functional skills that can be used in their daily life
• Possess the knowledge and skills to enable persons with an intellectual disability cultivate socially valued roles and relationships
• Understand how you can make a difference to people lives by improving service quality

Course Content

The certificate is made up of ‘core’ and ‘elective’ modules. The six core modules are mandatory and have to be completed by everyone.

The electives are designed to allow people ‘customise’ the course to meet their specific personal, professional or career needs.  This involves choosing two of the elective modules that most closely match your precise needs. It is important to note that once you have been accepted for the course College staff will be available to help you make your choices.

Core Modules

Intellectual Disability Studies

The module will make clear how delivering effective support is dependent on being able to see the person behind the label, or in other words, it will demonstrate how adopting a person centred approach will improve the quality of support service users receive.

Empowering the Individual

This module will provide you with the tools to implement a person centred approach. It will demonstrate how it can be used to enable a person with an intellectual disability to make life decisions.
In addition to exploring how the person centred approach positively effects people with disabilities, their families and your role as a frontline worker, the module will also show you how to practically promote empowerment in service delivery.

Community Inclusion

Promoting community inclusion and providing the right supports to assist service users develop meaningful links to the community are fundamental tasks in frontline work.

Facilitating Learning

This is a practical module you that will provide you the tools to teach in a way that supports a person learn what matters to them so they can achieve their life goals.

Work Practice

This module focuses on your role as a member of a team and how the organisational, regulatory, legal and economic environments you work in impacts on your ability to support service users. It explores how increased professionalism and working within defined policies and procedures makes for a more effective workplace.

Personal Effectiveness

The Personal Effectiveness module provides an opportunity toAssess and reflect on your current capacities and capabilities
Develop the key skills required of a frontline worker

The module is unusual in that it runs for the lifetime of the programme. This means you can apply what you are learning in other modules to improve your personal effectiveness, while at the same time, applying the skills acquired in this module to make studying a more effectively learning experience.

Elective Modules – Choose Any Two:

Person Centred Focus to Disability

• Challenging Behaviour
• Sexuality and Intellectual Disability
• Supported Employment
• Working Together with Families

Assessment

To successfully complete the course, you will need to:

• Write a series of short assignments
• Demonstrate you have acquired key skills you will use in your role such as the ability to teach a task or hold a meeting, for example
• Write accounts of what you have learnt in a module
• Sit an exam

This may sound daunting but you can find out the kind of supports we offer our students.

Career Prospects

Having a relevant QQI Level 5 qualification is a basic requirement to access work as a care assistant, SNA, health care assistant or social care assistant in a large number of organisations. If you are working already in a service that is HIQA regulated, a Level 5 qualification is now seen as an essential requirement and this is something that is not going to change.The certificate, itself, serves as a perfect gateway to the kinds of higher qualifications you’ll need if you want to progress your career. We see it, for example, as the ideal first step for people who want to become registered as a Social Care Worker, which they can do if they complete our BA in Professional Social Care (Disability).

The Certificate serves as a perfect gateway to the kinds of higher qualifications you’ll need if you want to progress your career. We see it, for example, as the ideal first step for people who want to become registered as a Social Care Worker, which they can do if they complete our BA in Professional Social Care (Disability). the course will help you deliver professional person centred services which can only enhance the quality of life of the people you support.

Transfer and Progression to Other Courses

After successfully completing the certificate you will be eligible to apply for our QQI Level 7 BA in Professional Social Care (Disability) degree course which may allow you register as a Social Care Worker.

To apply, visit the Online Application Centre on opentrainingcollege.com.

To find out more, contact Conor at [email protected]; or call him on 01-2990580.