CCE - PERKOBP

Please click on the following link to view our presentation slides:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/19gEUhp4tlpC0WtToEWgvuiVSQrlW2oQ7/view?usp=sharing

Acknowledgements The Campus Community Engagement (CCE) program is a voluntary initiative by Monash University Malaysia spanning from December 2019 to April 2020. Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the final presentation date was pushed back from February to April 2020. The purpose of the program is to identify an issue/issues at a NGO and combine the talents of multi-disciplinary students to propose a potential solution to said issue. Our group consists of the three of us, Daniel Goh U-Sheng (School of Information Technology), Wong Keen Ji (School of Me dicine & Health Sciences, Psychology) and Aaron Ng Shong Po (School of Medicine & Health Sciences, Psychology), whereby we were placed under the agency called Pertubuhan Keluarga Orang-Orang Bermasalah Pembelajaran (PERKOBP). The General Secretary of PERKOBP, Mr Chng Cheng Hui, was our Field Educator (FE), and the lecturer overseeing us, Dr Goh Pei Hwa from the School of Medicine & Health Sciences who is a Psych

Phase 1 Phase 1 was the introductory period where get to know the work culture and introduce ourselves to the trainees there. The adults training to work there, age ranging from 20s to 50s, are referred to as “trainees”. All the trainees have some form of learning difficulties (e.g. mainly autism). After getting to know them better by observing their work skills in packaging and conversing with them, we formulated a way to categorise all the trainees for the ease of managing our information and tailoring our activities for them. That being said, we understand that all trainees are unique and have their respective strengths and weaknesses. We grouped them in a simple way as shown below: Type I Verbal + Capable Type II Verbal + Non-Capable Type III Non- Verbal + Capable Type IV Non-Verbal + Non-Capable Able to converse Capable. Able to converse Not as capable Unable to converse Capable. Unable to converse Not as Capable. With the categorizations

Phase 2 Phase 2 goes in depth with a few selected trainees. We only went through the individuals whom we deemed have higher potential to obtain a job outside, based on our observation of their work ability in PERKOBP and activity performances. Our initial selection was everyone in the Type 1 and a few from the Type II category. Then we conducted: (1) an interview with the trainees, (2) an interview with their respective parents and some PERKOBP supervisors and lastly, (3) short role play sessions for those trainees. The purpose of the interview with the trainees was not only for us to gauge if they can work elsewhere, but also to assess their self-evaluation of their own capabilities. Thus, we also had them complete a self-evaluation form which assesses employability and life skills. However, only few are aware of their own skills and abilities, making it hard for them to self-evaluate. Hence, we also asked some of their parents to complete the form to gain more insight about

Themes With our site visits completed and data collected, we then organized what we gathered. Initially, we didn’t have much foresight of what to do with all our information. Nonetheless, with our AA's help, manage to figure it out! We developed themes and group them into 3 categories; trainees’, parents’, and supervisors’ themes. The themes were curated from our analysis of the selected trainees (those we selected in phase 2) and from all the interviews. For the trainees, we aimed to identify standout themes/skills of the trainee that can influence their ability to function effectively in life and/or work environment. It was a two part analysis whereby step 1 was to identify the themes of each particular trainee, and step 2 was to group similar themes across all the selected trainees. After identifying similar themes, we proceeded to rate our selected trainees on each theme. Then, we also grouped the themes into 2 categories, “Easy to train” and “Hard to train” (using o

Intervention Module Overview We developed this intervention module which targets the internal and external themes. These interventions are supported by research. Note that most research on interventions below mainly focus on people with autism because learning difficulties (LD) is a rather big umbrella category which includes many other disabilities (e.g. Down syndrome, ADHD, etc.). Unfortunately, we are limited by time constraints to include interventions for all types of LD, hence we chose to mainly focus on autism as most trainees in PERKOBP have autism. Nonetheless, we do recommend trainees with other types of LD to try the proposed activities in the Trainees Intervention and External Intervention blogs.

Trainees' Intervention 1. Social Skills Problem Children and adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) tend to face issues with social competence because it requires a large set of skills such as basic understanding of age-appropriate behaviour and social environments (Milligan, Phillip, & Morgan, 2015). Notably, they have difficulty in vocalising personal needs at the workplace, and often require assistance to guide them to express their needs (Ineson, 2015). Solution - Smart Talk: A Social Skills Training Program Smart Talk is a hybrid program of the PEERS Program (Laugeson, Gantman, Kapp, Orenski, & Ellingsen, 2015) and the ACCESS Program (Oswald et al., 2018) This program will aim to improve social expression, social skills knowledge, social skills usage, and peer engagement in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Graduate and undergraduate students in psychology will be trained to conduct the activities, and supervised by a clin

External Interventions 1. S tigma Problems Many organisations are reluctant to hire individuals with learning disability (LD) (Harun, Che’Din, Rasdi, Farhan, & Shamsuddin, 2020). In fact, the 1% quota policy for public sectors has not been satisfied and still remains below quota since 2008, with only 500+ with LD serving the government as of 2015 (Lavasani, Wahat, & Ortega, 2015) There are still strong adherence to stereotypes of people with LD among organisations   (Lavasani, Wahat, & Ortega, 2015) Interestingly, the Department of Social Welfare (SWD) has emphasised that adults with LD should only focus on doing low-skilled jobs Reflection of implicit prejudice against work potential of people with LD. 2. Parental Concerns for Child's Safety Problems Parents in Malaysia are generally more concerned over the well-being of daughters with LD while working outside compared to males (perhaps due to higher potential for sexual abuse/exploitation)