Minutes of the ON ESC July 7, 2015

Participants – Alida Van Dijk, Kosu Boudreau, NeilElford, Tom Kilts, Danielle Slump, Cindy Elkerton, Bob Tees, Larry Beech, Marvin Shank and Angela Schmidt

Summary from the CASC Conference – discussion in Hamilton about curriculum redevelopment occurring across the country. A proposal was taken to ESC to establish a curriculum working group and a community of practice for teaching supervisors. Both of the proposals were supported. A two year time frame has been given to establish a National SPE curriculum working group. The ESC asked Neil Elford to establish the membership and draft a terms of reference for the end of September (based on the motion from the ESC). There is less urgency with establishing the community of practice but approved in principle.

Discussion about the relationship between the ON ESC and the newly forming national curriculum group. ESC wants the involvement of the regional admitting chairs to ensure representation from each region. (Person could be the RAC or another designate). We have diverse regional needs and in Ontario CRPO is part of our discussion. We need to hold both common needs and regional needs. In Ontario we need to integrate with CRPO competencies in a timely manner.

Concern - How do we not lose the energy for curriculum development around our table?

Role Clarity - National curriculum group would help to facilitate conversations and so that we can keep moving forward, share what is happening in different regions and learn from one another. Perhaps later work on one national curriculum. We need to be talking to one another.

Discussion about Building a Community of Practice and Pastoral Counsellors. Alida Van Dijk and Larry Beech are co-chairs of the Pastoral Counsellors and writing scope of practice and talking about nomenclature...deciding on a new title for the CASC Specialist certificates.This group is planning a face to face meeting plus teleconference at end of August in a central location in Southern Ontario.

New Initiative – Supervisors affiliated with TST and WLS can embed university courses into their SPE. A grassroots initiative through Niagara Health (Bob Tees) is for a course to be offered to a variety of SPE programs across the province. AlidaVan Dijkwill be offering a course through Waterloo Lutheran Seminary entitledPsychotherapy and Spiritual Care - students can join in from any Ontario SPE through OTN, but must be registered with the seminary (additional cost for the course). This will cultivate collegial relationships among supervisors and will build a community of practice –– integrating curriculum into SPE. This grass roots initiative can work alongside of national approach of developing a national curriculum.

History of our Group - we started as teaching supervisors to discuss relationship with CRPO – a year later we established a Ontario ESC so that we would have accountability under the national ESC.

Next Steps as a Committee –

a/CommitteeInvited to Present on October 2nd Networking Day –50 min. to present and dialogue

b/ Review our structure as a committee –currently we have three sub-committee’s

  1. Curriculum working group - looking at curriculum development/ share with the national group
  2. Engagement Working Group – communication needed among all supervisors and advocacy role
  3. CRPO Working Group

Discussion - Perhaps we do not need the subcommittee structure but need to function as one body with all participating together and assign subcommittees for specific tasks.

Motion: Neil moves that we dissolve the sub commit structure and work together to meet the objectives of our group. Motion seconded by Bob Tees. All agreed.

c/ What is needed from us as supervisors for SPE as an Education Program to make a CRPO application to become a Recognized Educational Program?

  1. SPE Supervisors need to work and function as a unified faculty. Regular meetings. Consideration and regular review of how the CRPO competencies are promoted in the curriculum.
  2. Employment of a Common Curriculum by all supervisors identifying the core courses taken by all SPE students and the electives they choose from.

Curriculum has four core components - a course overview (what the students will be taught), required readings (must have some current peer reviewed journal articles as well as books), means of integration of learning, method of evaluation.

We need to decide if this means courses through universities embedded into the SPE unit or modules we develop to teach as didactics or a combination of both.

d/ Next meeting with be the middle of September. Kosu will send out a Doodle Calendar.

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