Ver 1.

2, February 2018

Family Capacity Building

Two novel Early Inter vention processes:

Visioning with Pictability© and

Implementing with Now and Next©
….By families for families

Quote
Commercial in confidence

Australia contact: Sylvana Mahmic, CEO, Plumtree; sylvana@plumtree.org.au +61 415 313 944
New Zealand contact: Dr. Annick Janson: annick.janson@egl.ac.nz +64 27 288 1949
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How is Pictability© training a game-changer?

• Pictability© is a new approach to help

families set a positive vision for now and the
future. Parents lead the process, exploring
possibilities about the future and taking steps
to make them happen.

• Pictability© launches families into a

powerful creative vision-setting session. This
new starting point ensures we bring the
authentic voice of the family into the
planning process in ways not accessible
before, securing a strong basis for parents’
engagement with the process.

• Pictability© training is carried out together

with professionals and families, to embody
the common ground in their new
partnership. Pictability© sessions are often
run by peer families.

• The Now and Next© program follows this

initial session. Parents continue working on
the goals they have chosen and are
committed to: a goal for their child, a goal
for their family and a goal for themselves.

“Pictability© helps the family drive some of their

children’s progress and family outcomes -
including those that are outside of therapy”.
Julie Cowmeadow, Speech Therapist

“Our vision session allowed us to find our team again…

for the first time we began to dream together again”
Clayton and Nicole Buffoni, Parents
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“The Now and Next peer
network’s collective agenda and
long term vision is to “build a
social movement to inspire a
new generation of parents of
young children with disabilities
to lead their family’s progress,
drawing from a sustainable and
deeply embedded peer-
networked foundation of
knowledge, capacity and
creativity.”

The Now and Next© program operates on 3 levels

1. Four full-day sessions, spread over 2 months. A creative learning program by and for
families with young children with disability and/or developmental delays. The program
facilitates parents to support and motivate each other to explore opportunities for
their children through a manualised and reproducible process. Using engaging
resources to transform their vision into goals and actions, they share strategies and
record outcomes via photos, video, audio and text through a bespoke multimedia
app, to celebrate and reflect on successes and on next steps.

2. A mechanism to identify and train emerging leaders. As the program unfolds,

emerging leaders amongst participants are identified and offered training to deliver
the program. They get paid during training and for subsequent facilitation work. Now
and Next© thus builds a team of peer facilitators who share their knowledge whilst
growing positive leadership within their communities.

3. A growing social movement. The long-term vision of participants is to inspire a new

generation of parents of vulnerable children “to lead their family’s progress, drawing
from sustainable and deeply embedded peer-networked foundations of knowledge,
capacity and creativity”. This agenda stems from the fact that families are acutely
aware that “professionals come and go – families are here to stay” (parent). As they
graduate from Now and Next©, families join the Alumni group and peer network to
continue to inform, support and motivate each other. This movement scales up as
more parents become trained as peer facilitators and its sustainability also strengthens.

“Every family should do the Now and Next program as early as possible”
Melo Kalemkeridis, parent

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Training topics and learning points

Evidence-informed
These programs aim to grow families’ understanding on improving their wellbeing
and flourishing. Rooted in positive psychology (Damon, 2008; Seligman, 1990,
2011; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), the programs provide a robust
foundation to understand the transformation from “grief” to “growth”. They are the
first programs for parents of children with disability since 2016 to use Prospection
theory (Seligman et al., 2016). Parents develop an inspirational long-term vision for
their child, plan goals and create a learning environment where peers assist each
other to build skills to achieve positive outcomes for their child and family.

A radically new way to craft effective parent-professional relationships

Traditional methods to bring about partnerships with professionals continue to be a
challenge. Through Now and Next© and Pictability©, parents learn to craft more
effective parent-professional relationships as a new basis for partnership aimed at
growing progress for their child and family. The parent-professional statement
authored by 57 families at the outset of their first family-lead conference was
launched globally by the UK Centre for Welfare Reform and Simon Duffy: http://
www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-az/parent-professional-relationship.htm)

Raising families’ feeling of agency over their future through fun activities
Using adult learning strategies, parents learn in a fun environment. Research-
informed mini-interventions based on positive psychology and mindfulness teach
participants to increase the wellbeing levels of their children and families. The
programs rest on a complete suite of novel engaging tools such as a purpose built
App to record progress, a colouring book to reflect mindfully and Goal to Action
processes through which parents reach their goals faster.

Award winner: Piloted and launched in 2016,

Now and Next© was a finalist in the 2017 NSW
Disability Industry Innovation Awards and a
winner for the 2017 ECIA NSW/ACT Excellence
Award for Outstanding Family-Centered and
Culturally Responsive Practice.

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How were these programs conceived?

The first version of these programs was designed by Dr Annick Janson, Research Affiliate,
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand & Sylvana Mahmic, CEO, Plumtree.

They are both mothers with lived experience and professionals in the disability sector.
With the benefit of hindsight, they asked: What would the best early intervention
program be for parents? They applied ethnography, positive psychology and family-
centered design thinking to implement radically new solutions and harness previously
untapped parent expertise and enthusiasm.

Today’s program has changed with the input of over 200 families who co-designed the
new versions of the programs.

The programs innovation and impact place them in a unique global category on their
way to changing family earliest experience of the disability sector. Our long term research
objectives are to document how empowering parents at this early stage will ultimately
decrease family dependency on services.

Annick (L) and Sylvana (R) presenting their pilot results at the
2015 NDIS New World conference in Brisbane.
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A Participative Research Process
Now and Next© trains its peer facilitators as participant-observers in the research process. Peer
facilitators track achievements in real time, through participants reporting progress in session and via
social media – as they seek to improve practice in an ongoing manner. Participants’ empowerment
levels are also measured as they gain core knowledge from other parents’ reflections, which they can
use in their own learning journeys. Real time tracking is crucial to improving outcomes.

Harnessing parents’ previously untapped commitment brings about novel insight, for instance this
illustration created by a participant to describe the program’s outcomes. These results are detailed in
our upcoming publication Embedding positive psychology and flourish thinking in peer support
networks for parents raising young children with disability: A game-changer (2018).

Illustration designed by Now and Next parent Jackie Pasternak

This publication also details how short and long term goals were classified and achieved during
the Now and Next© program: most goals were achieved at a rate of over 90%, with some such
as Investing in family relationship building and parents career goals to the rate of 100%.

In addition, the program engaged with audiences up to 48% from Cultural And Diverse
Language backgrounds, from between 23% to 50% fathers, depending on the activities and
times the activities are held. For a more detailed results table, see http://tinyurl.com/2017-
NN-research.

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Publications and Presentations
Awards
2017 ECIA NSW/ACT Excellence Award for
Outstanding Family Centred and Culturally
Responsive Practice (winner)


2017 NSW Disability Industry Awards (finalist)


2015 The Family Storysharing project launched by
Min. Ajaka. Movie trailer.
Publications
Janson, A. & Mahmic, S. (2018) Embedding positive
psychology and flourish thinking in peer support
networks for parents raising children with disability: A
game-changer. [draft]  Possibilities - Investing in the Future Conference,
Bharti, S. (2017) Inaugural Now and Next© Alumni
Conference Online Proceedings. Book Creator blog.    Mahmic, S. and Janson, A. (2016) Transforming
 
Janson, A. and Mahmic, S. (2017) Now and Next© - A
leadership pipeline adventure: Launching the first
Australasian network for families raising young
children with disability. [Accepted for publication:
Centre for Welfare Reform]
Heyworth, M., Mahmic, S. and Janson, A. (2017) Now
and Next©: A radically new way to build peer
leadership in families raising young children with
disability or development delay. International Journal
of Disability, Community and Rehabilitation. http://
www.ijdcr.ca/VOL15_01/index.shtml


Heyworth, M. (2017) Parent-Professional Relationship
Statement: Working in partnership with professionals.
Available at: www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/
by-date/parent-professional-relationship.html
Conference presentations
Mahmic, S. (2018) Keynote Address Now and Next –
Capacity building through family leadership, peer
work and education, NZDSN Wellington (April 11-12)
Janson, A. (2017) Co-production (co-design) and
organisational impact: The Australian Now and Next©
experience. European Association of Service Providers
to Disability (EASPD) Flourishing Lives: Supportive
Communities and Sustainable Development,
Montenegro (October 25-27; invited keynote).
Kalemkeridis, M. and Williamson, J. (2017) Being a
peer facilitator, Belonging Matters August
Conference, Melbourne (August 16-17).  7
Janson, R. and Janson, A. (2017) Peer networks for
sustainable impact. Arts and Society Round Table,
Paris, France (Oct 18).
 
Mahmic, S., Williamson, J., Touma, S. Buffoni, N.,
Kalemkeridis, M., Le, I., and Janson, A. (2017) Building
family leadership through harnessing peer support.
International Initiative for Disability Leadership (IIDL)
Brag and Steal: Building family capacity to improve
outcomes, Sydney (February 27-28).
Mahmic, S. Janson, A., Kalemkeridis, M. and
Williamson, J. (2017) Building family leadership
through harnessing peer support. ECI: Beyond
Sydney (May 25-26).
families' early experiences of self-direction. Building
Momentum: Turning ideas into action through self-
direction, Auckland (November 16-17).
Mahmic, S., Farah, I. Williamson, J and Janson, A.
(2016) Families and staff: Shaping new ways of
working together. International ECIA Early Childhood
Intervention Association, Melbourne (September
7-10).
Mahmic, S. and Janson, A. (2015) Designing a novel
multimedia planning and implementation that is both
innovative and fun! NDIS New World Conference:
Disability in the 21st Century, Brisbane (October
27-29).
Case Study
Mahmic, S., Treloar, R., Farah, I. Taylor, K., Le, I., Adler,
R. and Janson, A. (2016) Transforming the experience
of families raising children with disability. Available at:
http://bookcreator.com/blog/2016/01/book-creator-
helps-transform-experience-families-affected-
disability 
Blog
http://now-and-next-alumni.blogspot.com   
Web
www.plumtree.org.au/nowandnext
Twitter
https://twitter.com/nownextalumni
 Pricing structure
Pictability© Training

• The program trains 6 people per participating organisation

• Training is delivered as 2 days face to face, minimum of 1 hour of self-directed
practice (Pictability with one or more parents), and 1-2hrs of 1:1 coaching per
participant by Skype as required
• Participants who complete the training can administer Pictability to families
• Quote includes licensing fee for 12 months for participants who complete the
training

Total costs per organisation: $4,700, including:

Face to face training costs: …………………………………… $ 4,043
Costs associated with administering Pictability to families: $ 657

If an organisation wishes to train more than 6 trainees per training, the cost for
each added participant is $325 (up to 10 additional trainees)
Note: Each participant receives a personal Pictability kit, included in costs. As
each family has to have their own Pictability kit, there will be an additional cost for
each family of $25/kit when new families do their Pictability visioning, facilitated
by the above trainees.

Now and Next© Program

• The program includes 5 families per participating organisation
• We encourage both parents or one parent/carer and other significant adult in a child’s
life to take part in the program
• The program is delivered over 8 sessions of 2.5 hrs each or 4 sessions of 5 hrs each
• Sessions run on weekends to encourage both parents’ participation

Total cost per organisation: $5,272 (for up to 10 participants as described above)

If an organisation wishes to include more than 5 families per Now and Next program,
there is a sliding cost scale taking into consideration practical constraints of total
numbers of participants

All amounts are GST exclusive

Quoted by EGL (Ecosynergy Group Ltd.) 66 Government Road, Raglan 3225
Valid until 31 March 2018
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