Taking on a New Challenge (2013)

I am a licensed clinical social worker at First 5 Alameda County a diverse county in California. About 8 years ago, my home visiting department was dissolved, and my fellow home visitors were laid off. I was the program administrator and rather than being laid off was given the opportunity to lead our capacity building training program. Global Learning Partners and in particular Michael Culliton, enabled me to take on this new challenge and create a well-respected training program that offers beginning to intermediate level learning opportunities for providers serving young children 0-5 years of age and their families in Alameda County, California. We now have seven (7) other staff members who have taken the Dialogue Education training series. 

When I took the job as the Training Administrator, First 5 was offering one training per month. Today, we have at least 2–3 learning opportunities per week and we use a Training Development Worksheet that was developed from Dialogue Education, use pre-surveys, and work with our trainers to encourage lots of adult learning activities and less PowerPoint. Our latest improvement has been to use the Learning Nuggets to deepen training participants’ knowledge and skill transfer.  

Thank you, Jane, for all your work! I can say for sure that First 5 Alameda County is so much better as a result of your work!   

Beth Hoch 

Training Administrator 

First 5 Alameda County