What it Means to be an LCO Team Member

So, you’ve just been added as a team member on LCO... now what? 

Being added as an LCO team member to someone’s dashboard means that you’re seen as an important supporter in that person’s life! You may be wondering what’s expected of you as an LCO team member or what your role is. You can use LCO to provide support in a variety of ways, whether that means supporting certain goals, planning for the future, or collaborating on care, it is totally up to you and your team!  

Here are some steps to get yourself acquainted with LCO and learn more about what it means to be an LCO team member. 

       1. Talk with your team 

If you haven’t spoken to your team already, reach out to the person you’re supporting or the Account Manager who sent your invitation to discuss why you were personally invited, and what they’re looking to get out of LCO!

      2. Check your Permission Level

There are 2 different permission levels on LifeCourseOnline and they grant different levels of access and control on LCO dashboards. 

If you are an Account Manager, you have full access to all goals, events, and documents. If you are a User permission level, you will only see and receive notifications for the goals and events you are tagged to support. 

For a full breakdown of team member permission levels, check out this article here.

     3. Check Out the Plan 

To fully understand your role, take some time to review the exercises, the person you’re supporting has completed during the LifeCourse Charting Session. To view them, scroll down your navigation bar. You will find them all under “Resources”. 

Here are some tools that may be helpful to review:

• The Vision Tool will help you understand their vision for a good life in several different life domains and the areas on which they wish to focus on.
• The Life Trajectory exercise will help you understand what a good life means for the person you’re supporting, what they want to avoid, and what experiences have led them there. 
• View the Life Domain Selection exercise to figure out the life domains that they want to focus on at the life stage that they are in. 
• The Support Star exercise can help you understand the supports available to them in different areas of their life. 
• The Decision Making tool helps you to understand what they can decide on their own and what areas of their life they need extra support when making decisions.
• The ‘Caring For’ and ‘Caring About’ sections in the LifeCourse Charting Session will help you get a better understanding and breakdown of the roles you might play in caring FOR and caring ABOUT the person you’re supporting. To view this information, go to settings and under “Getting Started”, you can click on ‘Caring for’ or ‘Caring about’. You might be assisting in all these areas or some, so only take a look at the areas you are tagged in. To get a thorough understanding of the different ways you might get asked to support, make a list of any questions that you have, so that you can ask the Account Manager or person you’re supporting to clarify your role. Scroll down this article to view possible questions you can ask!

     4. Check if you’ve been tagged to support any events or goals 

LCO gives you the ability to tag team members to provide support for certain events or goals. Anytime you are tagged to support an event or goal, you will receive an email and dashboard notification. You can communicate with your team members directly on LCO by leaving comments on these goals and events.

You may also receive notifications when someone is looking for support on an event but doesn’t know who on your team is available to help! This is called the ‘raise your hand’ feature and you can respond to these requests by “raising your hand” if you’re available to provide support at that time. For more information, click here.

That’s the end of this article but just the beginning when it comes to exploring LCO. Make sure to check out our other knowledge base articles to learn more about LCO tools and features, and know that you can always email our support team with your questions by submitting a request below! 

And congratulations on being invited to join someone’s team! We’re sure they’re lucky to have you.

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Notes and excerpts

The ‘Caring For’ and ‘Caring About’ sections in the LifeCourse Charting Session, will help you get a better understanding and breakdown of the roles you might be playing in caring FOR and caring ABOUT the person you’re supporting. 

If you’re tagged in any section and would like to clarify your role, here are some possible questions you can ask: 

Caring For

• Providing day-to-day care
  • What kinds of events or goals will I be tagged on to support? 
    • Will I be assisting with personal care?
    • Will I be providing general supervision?
    • Will I be providing transportation to and from events?
  • How frequent are the events or goals?
  • If I’m not available to support, who else can provide oversight? 
  • Will I be more responsible in making sure daily living needs or healthcare needs are met? Or will I be responsible for both equally? 

• Material and financial needs 
  • Will I help make decisions about money (opening a bank account, making big purchases)?
  • Will I help with paying bills (rent, cell, internet)?
  • Will I help make everyday purchases (food, personal items, recreation)?
• Facilitator of Inclusion and membership
  • • Will I make choices about how he/she spends their time?
    • Will I be in charge of community connections? 
• Advocate for support 
  • • • How often are planning meetings going to happen?
      • What happens if I’m not able to attend?

Caring About

• Affection and self-esteem 
  • How can I best support the person I’m supporting in making sure they feel loved?
• Repository of knowledge 
  • • How can I get to know the person I’m supporting better?
• Lifetime commitment 
  • • • How can I strengthen my bond with the person I’m supporting?