Answer :

Thats a perfectly valid question that many people have asked us. There are many levels to answer your question and we will break down our answer as follows:

The DH Trailblazers Inclusive leadership training programme has been built from our expereince of leading on the design and delivering the successful FYD National Leadership Training Programme from 1986 – 2001. It was closed down when FYD was assimilated by NDCS. There has been a gap of 23 years where deaf and hearing people never really got an opportunity to experience the uniqueness of the deaf and hearing philosophy that made FYD famous from its founding in 1969. From 1986, the National Leadership Training Programme began to focus on leadership that can be applied through a range of activities through outdoors, arts, sports, drama, community projects and employment.

During the 1990’s, The National Leadership Training Programme began experimenting by allowing individuals who had experience to begin at Leadership Part two before proceeding to Project Management. It became clear that those individuals who did not start at the beginning, did not quite grasp the deaf and hearing philosophy concept and that impacted their working relationships with others who went through this from the beginning. Feedback from different participants expressed frustration at the deaf and hearing philosophy working model because some people had not had the unique experience offered in Part one.

At this point, a new policy was introduced that all people wishing to develop their skills and experience to work in deaf and hearing environments, teams, and workplaces needed to start from the beginning to allow everyone to understand the true fundamental foundation of how deaf and hearing people can work inclusively together.

This policy was further tested and feedback from experienced people, some were already managers, qualified teachers, qualified accountants, senior executives, all indicated that the Part one course was absolutely necessary for them. It allowed them to truly see how deaf and hearing people can work inclusively together. Many said afterwards that once they had experienced the deaf and hearing working inclusively together process, they were able to use their own experiences in the past and understand where things did not work and thanks to Parts 1 and 2, they now had the tools to change things to work better in the future.

The DH Trailblazers leadership training programme is adopting this policy as we do not want to repeat the same mistakes as the past experiments, we already know it does not work. Attending the DH Trailblazers leadership training from the beginning is not a reflection on your skills and experience, but rather it should be seen as a unique opportunity to truly experience deaf and hearing inclusive working right from the start and allow you to transfer this new knowledge into your everyday and working life afterwards.

Thank you

DH Trailblazers