Last Updated: Friday, 01-Nov-2024 17:21:03 EDT
Text which has been identified as out of date after recent changes will be indicated in this manner.
CHANGES
In 2018 Special Olympics Canada (SOC) made major changes to the database used to manage members', and clubs' information. Along with this change an interactive portal for interacting with the database was also introduced. Unfortunately these changes were brought in with minimal documentation; Special Olympics Ontario (SOO) has been working to create and update information ever since.
This page has been reordered so the most recent changes are at the top.
Changes September 2024
The week of September 2, 2024 changes to the Portal were announced. Other then the announcement there has been little information. SOO has been rewriting much of its documentation, but this will take a while.
Notably, there is a new option for the management of sessions, where the rollover from the previous session is managed by SOO, with this option the session is not required to span the year.
There are also some changes to menues.
Portal Upgrade, August 2023
There was a major upgrade of the portal on August 17, 2023. After a few initial glitches the improvements were obvious.
- Performance was very much improved
- Processes were streamlined
- The anual renewal of Participation Waiver, Privacy Policy, and Code of Conduct was replaced with a single Terms & Conditions which only had to be signed once. Basically what we had before 2018.
- The media release will be reviewed once a year.
COVID-19 and RTP
In the middle of all these changes and adjustments all sports were shutdown in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In preparation for when clubs could open up SOO added a complicated Attendance tracker to the portal in aid of contact tracing. This was used to list ALL attendees, members and otherwise.
As things opened up summer of 2021 a Return to Program (RTP) proceedure was put in place for clubs meeting in person.
As of May 1, 2022 the RTP requirement ended.
Waivers and Media Release
We all signed waivers, and were asked for a media release when we initially registered with SOO. As of September 2021 SOO wants all members to sign off on the waivers and Media release each year. If a member submits their own enrollment request this happens automatically. SOO does accept paper waivers but hopes to keep them to a minimum.
Many of our athletes are capable of signing their own waivers. For those who cannot it gets more complicated. If a Family Admin is in place for an athlete the parent can sign off on these for the athlete. While a Group Home Admins may submit enrollments for their clients, they can not sign the waivers for the athlete.
The situation for an athlete who s unable to understand in order to sign for themselves, or for whom a guardian is unavailable the situation has not been resolved.
Sessions
Sessions were introduced. This was new. In the past when an individual was enrolled in a club they stayed a member of that club until removed. New enrollments need to be submitted for each season.
On August 31, 2019 all current enrollments expired, going forward a new session is REQUIRED for each new season.
As of September 2021 SOO is requiring that all sessions start on September 1, and end on August 31 of the following year. This will require all members to become enrolled in the new session. NOTE: as of fall 2024 this has been changed.
Special Olympics: New Data Base, and Membership Portal Introduction, 2018
As of the Spring of 2018 Special Olympics Canada replaced the old ActiveSOC database with a new database and the Special Olympics Membership Portal. This brought about many changes in the way we do things.
Special Olympics Canada has replaced the old ( ActiveSOC ) database with a new database, data was transferred from the old to the new database, and the concept of Sessions was added.
One result was that contact ID's were changed.
This portal was designed to
- allow new volunteers and athletes to register with SOO through the portal,
- allow all registered athletes and volunteers to maintain their own profiles directly, and to apply to enroll in programs through an online interface,
- allow club Head Coaches' and Managers to manage their club on the portal.
It was SOO's intention that the athlete's profile be kept up to date on the portal, removing the need for the paper forms we have been requireing for the athletes each year. For this to work we have to know that the profile information IS being kept up to date.