Learning the Strategy
The RQP educational strategy is designed to be integrated into the on-going work that organizations, agencies and services are already doing. There are several resources for learning the RQP strategy and many opportunities to work with RQP staff, including:
- On-site Training
- Regional and National Training Institutes
- Written materials and curricula
- Online resources, including both self-paced and facilitated online courses
- Consulting services
- Technical assistance
- Conference presentations
A Shift in Practice
RQP staff have worked hard for years to make our skill-building methods easy to learn and easy to teach to others. But, as simple as the actual methods might be, staff of many agencies and organizations find that teaching RQP’s skills requires a slight, but significant shift in their own practice.
Some staff members find that they need to go from being the advocate for people to teaching them to advocate for themselves. Other staff members realize they must change their practice from doing the problem solving for the people they serve to building their capacity to figure out how to solve their own problems. And, most simply, all staff must shift from asking questions of or for clients, patients, participants and students, to encouraging them to think and act on their own behalf, starting with asking their own questions.
Even with the challenge of a change in practice, there are practitioners – staff in the field using RQP – who make the shift quite easily. Some of the most successful practitioners say that they see RQP’s methods as “kind of what I’ve always tried to do, but I had never had a systematic way for doing it.” And some practitioners say that RQP’s methods are “just what I’ve always been looking for!”