Presentation given to Ottawa Stroke Survivors Association by the Canadian Stroke Network on February 9th, 2012.
File may be copied and used for presentations to stroke community groups.
5. Our Goal:
• To reach out to individuals and groups
across Canada contemplating, developing
or operating support groups for individuals
and families affected by stroke, and to
provide these individuals and groups with
the required resources and tools.
6.
7.
8. LifeAfterStroke.ca
Site was developed with 3 key elements
in mind:
1. Resources
2. Accessibility
3. Community
10. RESOURCES
Getting On With Life After Stroke Vol. 1
Getting On With Life After Stroke Vol. 2
A Family Guide to Pediatric Stroke
A Patient’s Guide to Canadian Best
Practice Recommendations for Stroke
Care
A Resource Guide for Community-
Based Stroke Support Groups in
Canada
Stroke Support Group Toolkit
All free for download, printing
and distribution.
11. STROKE SUPPORT GROUP
TOOLKIT
TOOLS AND RESOURCES
Sample Agenda Guide
Session Plans Guide
Evaluation Forms
Feedback Forms
Venue Checklists
Sample Media Release
Fact Sheets
One of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence+100 of Canada’s leading scientists and clinicians from 24 universities coast to coast. Headquartered at the University of Ottawa, also Includes partners from industry, the non-profit sector, provincial and federal governments. The Network’s Mandate is toReduce the physical, social and economic impact of stroke on the lives of individual Canadians and on society as a whole.MY NAME IS LORI BARRON. I AM THE ONLINE COMMUNITIES MANAGER FOR THE CANADIAN STROKE NETWORK, AND THIS IS LIFE AFTER STROKE.
WHEN WE SET OUT TO DEVELOP LIFE AFTER STROKE We recognized that there were gaps across the country and unmet needs when it came to access to common tools needed to establish a strong community of stroke recovery groups across the country.
WHEN WE SET OUT TO DEVELOP LIFE AFTER STROKE We recognized that there were gaps across the country and unmet needs when it came to access to common tools needed to establish a strong community of stroke recovery groups across the country.
Ottawa is very lucky to have an organization like the Stroke Survivors Association, but there are a lot of cities and communities around the country are not so lucky.We wanted to make it possible for people to have access to the same information and resources needed to start up an stroke support group - regardless of where they live in the country.
Based on the the Network’s Getting on with the rest of your life after stroke handbook, LifeAfterStroke.ca picks up where the booklet leaves off, expanding on the information, ideas and tools in those books.
The CSN provides electronic copies of all of our resources on the website so that anyone can download them, print them, and make as many copies as they want.
We also provide contact information so that individuals or stroke support groups can contact us and ask for printed copies. Because different groups may have different financial resources, we want to make it as easy as possible for anyone to have access to the resources. One Resource that is especially important for stroke groups is the Stroke Support Group Toolkit.
The Stroke Support Group toolkit provides a step-by-step guide to setting up your own stroke support group, and has a Tools & Resources section at the end that has a number of documents that ALL groups should have. These forms are also available on the website to download in PDF format. That way, if a group wants to download them to print and use in their meetings they can do so.We have also provided copies of the documents in Word format. We wanted to do this so that each group can customize them to fit with their individual groups. If they want to change some questions they can go ahead and do so; and if they want to add their own logo and contact information, they can go ahead and do that without having to start from scratch to build their own forms.We provide contact information throughout the document, and on the website so that anyone can contact us if they have questions about the forms, or if they need a hand with customizing their own.
Actually, since we can’t get out to every location in the country to explain the features of this website to people, the presentation that I am giving today will be made available on the website in the coming days so that groups elsewhere can download it or watch it online.
The second element that was extremely important to us when developing this site was accessibility.Understanding that stroke patients have various needs when it comes to accessibility, we incorporated a number of elements to help with the site’s use.
The colours were specifically chosen to provide maximum contrast without being to overpowering on the eyes.The website is 100% bilingual so the information is accessible to English and French speaking Canadians.The font size can be adjusted to any size to ensure that the text is legible for anyone who might have trouble reading small print.And the next piece is something that we are really excited about.
eSSENTIAL Accessibility™ helps people with disabilities USE THE INTERNET. I can’t get into a lot of detail without Internet access, but in a nutshell, eSSENTIAL Accessibility is a licensed software that we have paid to have incorporated into our website. By having US pay for the software license we are allowing ANYONE to download the essential accessibility software free of charge and use to view, read, and navigate our website. But that’s not all! Once you have essential accessibility on your computer you can use it on ANY website.Once installed on your computer, Essential Accessibility can be customized to suit your individual needs, and you can then use it to increase the size of the page, Read the web content out loud to you instead of you having to read it you can set it to navigate the page by head movement By voice command, and so on.It’s a really great resource that I recommend to anyone who might have trouble using a mouse, or focusing on written text for an extended period of time; and it’s an organization that we are really proud to have partnered with.
The 3rd element to the Life After Stroke website is just now in the process of becoming reality, and it is why I am here today talking to you.It’s great to have a website, have plenty of resources, but there is one key piece that will make LifeAfterStroke a truly valuable resource for Canadians from coast to coast: and that is COMMUNITY.We will be building an online community members’ forum for people to join, share information, and discuss issues with other people interested in stroke.
And if Discussion Forums are not your cup of tea, we have also created a facebook page. If you are on Facebook we would be absolutely honoured to have you “like” our page and take part in discussion with other members. If you have a great resource to share, go ahead and post it there!If you have a question that you would like answered, post it. Perhaps someone else has dealt with the same thing, and has an answer for you.We’d love to help you get the word out in promoting events that you might be holding. If so, post the event information, and we’ll share it on our other sites!We really want to make Life After Stroke a living community for anyone who has been touched by stroke, and we can’t do it without people just like you.