Experiential Consulting, LLC
 

This interactive session will help you understand how crafting “essential eligibility criteria” (EEC) under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) can decrease risk exposure while increasing inclusivity. We will break down the relevant parts of Title III of the ADA into practical terms. Then, we will begin the process of developing EEC.

By the end, you should have a better grasp of how the ADA applies, along with clear actionable steps to assist with compliance, including: drafting or reviewing EEC; reviewing public-facing presence (website, marketing materials, etc.) to ensure that what you are putting out includes and/or aligns with your EEC and conveys that you do not discriminate based on disabilities; and designing and integrating into your staff training how to communicate appropriately regarding disability accommodation requests.

Traditional views of safety are deeply ingrained in how we talk about, measure, and attempt to manage risk in the outdoor/experiential education industry. Scholars and researchers from sectors such as manufacturing, aeronautical, health care, occupational health and safety, etc. have evolved in their thinking and are making great strides in what is known as Safety Differently––a progressive way of thinking about safety. Outdoor programs have much to learn from the high-level research and thinking associated with Safety Differently.

We will use videos, small discussion groups, and interactive elements. Participants will come away with a one-page handout showing a compare and contrast and outline of key action steps to apply a Safety Differently lens to their own program.

Join us for a collection of success stories and lessons learned from four outdoor programs from different sectors (outdoor education and conservation corps) who ran programs during summer of 2020 while adapting to the challenges of the pandemic. How did they adapt their protocols? What criteria did they use to determine if they could operate? How did they train their staff, and manage their physical and emotional safety? What lessons did they learn along the way? How did they adapt their protocols as we learned more about COVID-19? What did they do when participants or staff had a suspected exposure? How did they communicate over social media during the pandemic? We will hold a facilitated conversation with all four speakers, and take questions from the participants as well. 

It's easy for a program to say "Safety is Our Top Priority!" ... but safety means different things to different people. If you are not explicit about your program's actual risk tolerance, you can end up over-promising safety in ways that enlarge your liability, or create inconsistencies from one activity to the next.

This interactive workshop will help you understand the benefits of crafting a risk statement for your organization, and look at some models from other programs to analyze and learn from. Participants will leave with some clear action steps to bring the learning home to their organization.

This presentation will help field and administrative staff better understand the overall value of screening in outdoor programs. The presentation will give screening guidelines, examples, and
advice as participants align their medical and psychological screening, program descriptions, student paperwork, program framing, and Essential Eligibility Criteria with current industry standards.

We will discuss the predictive value of screening, what purpose it serves, student selection, and how screening fits into the organization’s values and related systems. 

What drives a person’s decision to file a lawsuit? Often, the decision is driven largely by emotional factors. This presentation will focus on how to use facts, honesty, competence and compassion as bedrock techniques both on the “front end” of educating clients and students regarding inherent risk, and the “back end” of an incident related to an emotionally intelligent and competent response to a serious incident. Clients who felt under-informed or misinformed are much more likely to sue in the event of an incident. The presentation will discuss the importance of honestly and clearly explaining the concept of inherent risk, and getting client “buy-in” to risk as a fundamental part of an adventure. The second part of the presentation will focus on how to competently and compassionately manage an incident, beyond the nuts and bolts of emergency response.

Trauma-informed is a heavily trending term right now, but do we really know what that means?  In this talk Dr. Sandy Newes will give an introduction to the core essential elements of trauma informed programming, with an emphasis on how this may be different than the widely accepted beliefs around increased challenge and “stepping outside of your comfort zone” as being critical elements of the change process in adventure programming.  

She will also introduce a resiliency framework and some simple trauma informed and brain-based skills that can help your programming to be more trauma informed, inclusive, and potentially more effective overall.  

Outdoor / experiential education programs rely on their risk management tools and systems, but what happens when those traditional systems undermine efforts to create equitable and inclusive programs?

This interactive presentation will critically explore the hidden pitfalls where traditional risk management systems work at cross purposes with equity and inclusion, and offer solutions based on experience. Participants will engage in small group activities, learn from other participants, and walk away with action steps to help them align their systems with their inclusion goals. 

We've all experienced near-misses outdoors, but how often do we take the time to really harvest the potential learning from these experiences? What happens if we repeatedly ignore the "cheap lessons" near-misses offer to us? How can we tell the difference between a "relevant" near-miss, and "business as usual?" 

This  interactive workshop will explore theory and research on near-misses as "accident precursors," share some poignant examples from the presenter's personal experience, suggest specific organizational steps to convert near-misses into learning, and invite participants to apply these steps to some of their own memorable near-misses. 

Attend this session to learn how to foster cultural norms that empower employees to candidly discuss their concerns and proactively report on risks, incidents, and more. Shift from a blame-oriented culture to one focused on collective learning that analyzes and addresses harm from a systems perspective. A Just Culture approach calls for disciplining employees for inappropriate behavior, rather than for harm, which often stems from myriad underlying factors—not just individual decisions and actions. Leave this session ready to reconnect with your team so you can collectively identify risks, address harm, and enact justice rather than punishment.