• Resilience, Self-Care, and Burnout Prevention
• Counselling, Therapy, and Coaching: Foundational Skills (2 Days)
• Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), an Introduction
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), an Introduction
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an Introduction
• Conflict Resolution Workshop
• Working With Romantic and Familial Relationships, an Introduction
• Debriefing Workshop
• De-Escalation Training Workshop

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Resilience, Self-Care, and Burnout Prevention

Self-care and building resiliency are vital in the social service sector, along with other caring professions. Resiliency is also helpful in all aspects of our lives. In this interactive workshop, participants will build resiliency by exploring strategies for self-care. Root causes of stresses and challenges will be explored, yet from a strengths-based lens, focusing on proactive strategies. The course is designed around tools from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and is based upon trauma-informed, anti-oppressive, and adult learning principles. DBT elements include mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills. Participants will also be encouraged to engage in critical self-reflection about ways in which they can foster resiliency for themselves, their peers, their organizations, their profession, and their clients.

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the causes and contributors to burnout and resilience
2. Assess the level of stress or burnout
3. Build a toolbox of resilience techniques for a range of scenarios and accounting for limited time and resources
4. Share successful resilience strategies with other participants
5. Create a plan for self-care and resiliency

Counselling, Therapy, and Coaching: Foundational Skills (2 Days)

This two-day workshop will explore some of the fundamental skills, attitudes, and knowledge that is required for helping others. The workshop is interactive and will cover a wide variety of skills and techniques including: a brief outline of popular psychotherapy approaches, common techniques to build rapport and influence clients toward positive outcomes, self-care for practitioners, and some basic conflict resolution and crisis intervention skills.

Learning Objectives

1. Explore differences between counselling, psychotherapy, and coaching
2. Understand values and principles of counselling and therapy
3. Learn fundamental skills, including: building rapport with clients, validation, setting limits, and reframing
4. Begin to explore approaches to challenging clients
5. Practice skills and receive feedback

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), an Introduction

Originally designed as an empirically-supported treatment for people experiencing suicidality and borderline personality disorder, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) has since been demonstrated to be effective in treating many other mental health challenges. This introductory workshop will include theoretical aspects of DBT, a few key techniques from each of the four DBT pillars and how to apply them in specific situations. These tools include a dialectical approach, chain analysis, wise mind, mindfulness, and validation. Working with case examples from their own experience, participants will hone their skills with practical applications.

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the history of DBT
2. Learn the theoretical underpinnings of DBT
3. Learn skills from the four key pillars of DBT: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness
4. Practice skills and receive feedback

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), an Introduction

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is an empirically-supported treatment modality for a variety of mental health challenges. This introductory workshop will explore the effects of a person’s thoughts, emotions, sensations, behaviours, and environment on either re-enforcing or improving mental health challenges. Both the theory and techniques of CBT will be incorporated. Through the use of case examples and role play, participants will learn how to apply CBT techniques.

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the history of CBT
2. Learn the theoretical underpinnings of CBT
3. Learn CBT skills, including: thought records, behavioural experiments, mindfulness, and reality acceptance
4. Practice skills and receive feedback

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an Introduction

Based on the belief that suffering is a result of natural human reactions, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) balances both acceptance and change strategies to foster a more flexible approach to life. Some of the key challenges addressed by ACT are inflexible approaches to our self-concept, getting caught up in our rigid thoughts and interpretations of the future and the past, avoiding difficult emotions and experiences, and losing touch with our values and commitments. Participants in this introductory workshop will be exposed to the theory of ACT and also some of its fundamental tools and approaches. Interactive exercises will allow participants to learn the skills through an experiential learning model.

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the history of ACT
2. Learn the theoretical underpinnings of ACT
3. Learn ACT skills, including: cognitive de-fusion, self-as-context, examining values, and committed action
4. Practice skills and receive feedback

Conflict Resolution Workshop

Conflict is an inevitable and often unpleasant aspect of life, and yet also conflict offers an opportunity to improve relationships and achieve positive outcomes, if it is handled well. In this interactive workshop, participants will explore the causes of conflict, approaches to resolving conflict, and practical skills to improve the chances of achieving true win-win solutions. Real world examples from participants’ experience will be used to understand the application of the skills and approaches discussed in the workshop.

Learning Objectives

1. Define conflict and related concepts
2. Understand a framework for resolving conflict
3. Explore barriers to conflict resolution and potential solutions
4. Assess conflict resolutions styles (for self and others)
5. Learn conflict resolution skills
6. Practice skills and receive feedback

Working With Romantic and Familial Relationships, an Introduction

Being a social species, humans tend to engage in complex webs of interconnected relationships. While these relationships are often a source of support and positive experiences, intimate relationships are often also the greatest sources of pain and stress in people’s lives. This introductory workshop will focus on romantic and family relationships and will cover ways to assess the dynamics of a relationship (including signs of abuse) and how to apply skills to work with people in relationships. Participants will be encouraged to share examples from their work in order to learn how to apply the skills to real-world cases.

Learning Objectives

1. Learn fundamental theory of relationships, including personality and attachment
2. Assess relationships for common patterns of conflict and signs of abuse
3. Learn skills to work with relationships, including simple steps to help clients avoid making things worse
4. Explore real-world case examples from participants’ work experiences

Debriefing Workshop

Workplace stress, values conflict, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout are occupational hazards for those working in the social service sector. These factors contribute to negative outcomes for service users, service delivery, and the mental health of service providers. By incorporating structured debriefing practices into the everyday operation of shelters, drop-ins, and other social service agencies, workers can offer mutual support and engage in critically reflexive self-reflection. This leads to improved delivery of service for service users and greater mental health for service providers.

Learning objectives:

1. Understand various debriefing models
2. Engage in practical examples of debriefing
3. Plan how to implement debriefing models within the workplace
4. Advocate for changes necessary to implement debriefing

De-Escalation Training Workshop

This interactive workshop enables participants to recognize, prevent, and intervene in situations that may potentially involve physical and psychological violence. Strategies are drawn from the facilitator’s extensive experience in social work and psychotherapy as well as his study of various self-defense and martial arts systems. The overarching goals of the approach are awareness, avoidance, de-escalation, and, if necessary, escape from potentially violent situations.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify causes and risk factors for conflict and violence
2. Implement self-regulation strategies in crisis situations
3. Prevent violence through rapport and connection
4. Apply de-escalation techniques