2016-2017

Among Friends partnered with the UCEDD* at OHSU* piloted a sexuality education training to gauge the community’s needs regarding social-sexual issues. The response was overwhelming. It was clearly evident that professionals in the field of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities felt a dire need for more education, support, guidance and skills to address behaviors they were faced with every day.

* University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at Oregon Health and Science University

2018

Among Friends and our community partners, the UCEDD* at OHSU* and OTAC* designed the framework of the certification program and got to work building the content and the delivery systems. During this year we mapped the trajectory of the three tiers and completed the first tier, along with all of the “back end” systems and data collection. It was time-consuming and exhausting at times, but in the end it felt worth all that hard work!

* University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at Oregon Health and Science University and Oregon Training and Consultation

2019

Among Friends and our two community partners on this project launched our very first official Tier 1 in May of 2019. It was an in-person training held in Portland, Oregon. We had an incredible group of 26 and our time together was so fulfilling! We held a second in-person Tier 1 in September of 2019 that was equally inspiring!

In between these first two sessions of Tier 1, we were planning, designing, and building Tier 2. You’ve heard the phrase, “building the plane while you’re flying it”, right? Well that is exactly what we were doing!

2020

In January of 2020, we held our third session of Tier 1 which was another great success. We had three more scheduled for later that year, but then, as you already know, the pandemic disrupted all of the groundwork we had laid. As it became clear that the pandemic shut-downs were not going to end in a matter of a few weeks or a month, we realized all the work we had done was going to be lost if we didn’t figure out how to pivot and offer the entire training and certification program online. So, we spent a great deal of the remainder of the year redesigning Tier 1 for an online option.

We knew that we had to ensure that the material was just as engaging and interactive online as it had been in person, and we were extremely proud of what we were able to accomplish.

Interestingly enough, in order to make the 5-month Tier 2 cohort experience more accessible, we had already designed it to be online. That’s how we managed to keep on track and have our first graduation of Tier 2 participants who started in February of 2020 and completed their cohort in July of 2020.

2021-2025

We will be updating the rest of our story and posting it soon! We hope you'll come back to hear where we are today!

Tier 1 pre/post test data

Averages calculated on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being “not at all confident” and 10 being “highly confident”