CURRENT LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT 2013

PDF copy of the 2013 Encompass Training Calendar

Are the Kids OK?  Assessing risk while supporting families

Solid gold! This workshop is a popular favourite which regularly receives rave reviews by participants.  All who work with families, children and young people must have as their focus the safety and well-being of the children.  An ability to assess the risk of harm, and to recognise both protective factors and indicators of danger, is crucial. This one-day workshop provides an opportunity for participants to develop their knowledge and skills specific to work with families where the well-being of children is the focus. Participants will have the opportunity to apply core concepts and knowledge to their own practice context.   

Who should attend?  Workers providing early intervention and intensive family support services; other family support workers; people who work with young parents and families in crisis.

Finding Magic Moments – making a difference with young people

Keen to make a real difference through your work with highly vulnerable young people?  This is the workshop for you! This one-day workshop supports participants to recognise opportunities for change and explores how they can be used positively in the lives of young people. Issues influencing vulnerability and resilience are considered, with an exploration of the implications for youth-work practice. For example what is it that makes a young person more resilient, or more vulnerable, than others, often even within the same family? What does this mean for your practice? This workshop is centred on the idea of making every action count in your daily work with young people.  Participants are supported to integrate information from key bodies of knowledge (such as attachment theory and developmental theory) and to apply it effectively in everyday practice in working with, protecting and supporting vulnerable young people.

Who should attend? Residential care workers, foster and kinship care support workers, youth and family support workers, workers in government and community agencies.

Risk Assessment in Action – the art of judging risk in child protection

Risk assessment is a foundation skill for effective child protection practice, underpinning all decisions about safety and support. This comprehensive workshop uses evidence-based knowledge to develop participants’ understanding of the concepts central to risk assessment in contemporary child protection practice. Beyond a core understanding and skills-base in child protection, this workshop challenges participants to examine how they apply knowledge in practice. Practical exercises, using frameworks which reinforce good quality assessments, enable participants to increase their competence in making comprehensive assessments and defensible decisions.

Who should attend? Child protection workers in government and community agencies, including investigation and assessment, intensive family support, statutory intervention services, alternative care and reunification services. Both experienced workers and those newer to the field will benefit.

PRINT Assessment and Decision Making stream

Putting the Pieces Together – family contact for children in care      

Decisions about family contact for children and young people placed away from home must be made every day, yet the dilemmas are many: How much contact is necessary?  Should this be supervised?  What emphasis should be placed on the wishes of all concerned? How do the child’s wishes influence decision-making?  When and where should contact occur?  Even once these questions are answered there is the challenge of actually making contact happen. This popular interactive workshop explores the messages that the latest research says are important, and assists participants to integrate this knowledge with practice within their own work context. 

Working with Complexity – parents with mental health, substance use & family violence     issues

Frontline workers confront increasingly complex family situations where children’s safety is linked to serious and seemingly chronic parental issues.  This workshop considers practice skills in working with families to make a difference, when parental issues relate to the often concurrent issues of mental health, substance misuse and family violence. The workshop provides frameworks for understanding parental functioning, including change theory, and considers how best to respond to the needs of children in these circumstances. Workshop content is evidence-based and focuses on decision making which balances safety with least intrusive intervention.

Who should attend? Child protection workers in government and community agencies, including investigation and assessment, intensive family support, statutory intervention services, alternative care and reunification services.

The Road To Change – effective case planning for active intervention   

Purposeful case planning – knowing what you are doing and why – is the key to effective work with families and young people, especially when time-frames are limited. This workshop examines how to apply the principles of inclusive case planning so that the process itself helps to engender hope and promote change.  It considers the dilemmas faced by workers providing intervention services, where a commitment to client-directed planning can seem at odds with ‘imposed’ goals around child safety.  The challenges of goal-focused work with families impacted by recurrent crises are also considered.   This workshop is for any worker who wants to stay focused while working with clients. 

PRINT Working with Families stream

Keeping Hope Alive – vicarious trauma and emotional wellbeing in human services practice

The concept of “vicarious trauma” is used to describe the emotional and psychological impact of working in the human services. Those who have chosen careers that require them to care about the plight of others often endure a significant impact on their own emotional health. However few of us have ever had the opportunity to learn about these complex processes, to reflect on our own personal experiences of caring, and, most importantly, to learn and implement strategies which allow us to practice our unique profession in ways which are safe, sustainable, and which celebrate the privilege of helping others. This workshop, by Matthew J Armstrong, considers key concepts and models relating to vicarious trauma and emotional wellbeing, including ideas drawn from recent neuroscience research into trauma and empathy.

Who should attend? Anyone working in human services. The workshop considers specific strategies for different participants, including child protection and family welfare workers, teachers, foster carers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers, administrative staff, and supervisors.

Effective Recording for Child and Youth Work

Recording – from case notes to formal reports – is essential to effective child and youth work but can be difficult to do well. This highly interactive workshop examines the science and the art of recording in various contexts. Learn how to write well-structured documents which achieve their purpose as tools to help protect and support children and young people.  Participants will learn to apply the ‘rules’ for succinct but effective recording, including efficient and useful case notes, quality written assessments and plans, and well-supported practice decisions.

Who should attend? Government and community agency workers, family support workers, youth workers, alternative care workers, intervention service workers.

Effective Supervision For Supervisors - being the best you can be!

Supervisors in the area of child, youth and family welfare commonly learn how to supervise solely through ‘on the job’ experience.  Their main source of knowledge may be their own experiences of being supervised.  This interactive one-day workshop assists supervisors in child and family welfare and youth services to develop their skills in supervision practice. Participants are introduced to key theory and knowledge, and supported to use this in examining their own framework for supervision.

Who should attend? Government and community agency workers currently supervising staff, new supervisors and workers interested in taking on a supervisory role. 

Starlight, Starbright – practice tools for change in families  

You have your case plan and are home visiting regularly, but what should you actually be doing when you see your families? You know there must be more to it than having a chat about how everything is going.  How do you help families “make the change”?  Illuminate, brighten and shine up your practice by participating in this very practical workshop that explores the “how-to’s” of real work with families to achieve outcomes. During this workshop you will have the opportunity to be introduced to a range of practical techniques and tools that you can implement with families during home visits.   By the end of this skills-oriented workshop you will have new strategies in your “tool kit” for immediate use in your practice with families in seeking the change they want to achieve.

Who should attend? Family support workers; government and community agency workers providing early intervention and support services.

PRINT Practice Development stream

Needs-led Practice – supporting carers to make a difference

Working with carers to support children, young people and their families requires a multitude of skills and the knowledge to help carers respond effectively to children’s complex needs.  What key concepts must underpin efforts to make a difference for children in care?  What core actions, on your part, are the crucial ones to help carers respond to the needs of children?  This workshop looks beyond the basics to consider the most effective ways to support carers as perhaps the most important resource of the child protection system. It includes the similar-but-different demands upon kinship carers and respite carers.

Who should attend? Workers in any agency working with carers to actively support their care of children and young people, statutory child protection services.

Good Practice in Residential Care    

Residential care workers in services designed to meet the needs of children and young people in care have a challenging job! They must have the knowledge and skills to work effectively with children and young people who are likely to be affected by multiple issues including loss and trauma.  They must be able to work effectively with family members and other people significant to a child or young person, drawing on the evidence of ‘what works’. It is critical that they can collaborate with other professionals outside the residential and contribute to planning and decision-making for the child or young person. This workshop supports and challenges residential care workers to examine how they can use their everyday activities to create therapeutic opportunities that make a difference for children and young people.

Who should attend?  Workers in licensed residential care services, semi-independent living services and related support services, including team leaders, youth support workers, live-in carers, and other care workers, including casual and contract workers. Specialist foster carers will also benefit from this workshop.

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Family Ties– working with kinship and relative carers  

We all acknowledge the principle that children and young people who need care are best placed with kin, if there are family members who can provide safety and help meet their emotional needs.  However there are some challenges to be overcome!  Achieving positive family contact with parents can be tricky, and research tells us that reunification planning can be more difficult than with non-relative carers.  Family of origin patterns of interaction, and long-standing issues around relationships and the meanings attributed to past events, can be complicated. Cultural and customary kinship roles add a further dimension.  This workshop puts the spotlight on the particular issues which workers must address, for kinship care to work well, and considers strategies to assist all parties to focus on the child’s needs irrespective of ‘family’ issues.

Who should attend? Workers in any agency working with kinship carers to actively support their care of children and young people, government and community services, Indigenous and non-Indigenous licensed care services.

PRINT Out of Home Care stream

Seeing Clearly - identifying harm and risk of harm   (half-day)    

This half-day workshop specifically targets the issues of how to prevent and identify harm and risk of harm to children and young people.   Participants examine the concepts of harm and likely harm as relevant to legislative obligations, the Statement of Standards and requirements of the Department of Communities.  Participants then explore how these concepts work in practice through a series of activities.  These activities also consider mandatory requirements for recording.   

Who should attend?  This workshop has been specifically designed for workers in all licensed care services.

Towards Identity and Belonging – reconnecting with family

Work to reconnect children, young people and their families is both complex and sensitive, often creating significant practice challenges.  Yet it is imperative that this be done well, given that most children and young people living away from their families return home at some point, in some way.  Even for those children who cannot ‘go home’, research suggests there are benefits in family connectedness, at whatever level is optimal for the individual child or young person. This workshop is designed to enhance practice skills critical to safely reunifying or reconnecting families. Evidence from research is used to clarify conceptual frameworks and develop skills in: assessing safety issues; planning effective supports and interventions; and working collaboratively with children and young people, their families and carers.

Tuning In to Acting Out - responding to the behaviours and needs of young people

(two days)   

This workshop consists of six modules delivered over two days. The modules include: the impacts of pathways into and out of care (including statutory and residential care); understanding trauma and loss; understanding attachment and security; interpreting and responding to difficult behaviour; effective behaviour guidance; staying safe when behaviour is extreme. The workshop promotes theoretical understanding as a basis for effective practice, and takes a very practical approach for applying the knowledge in everyday work with young people.

Who should attend?  Workers in both government and community services working with young people, including youth workers, direct care workers in residential services for young people, statutory child protection and juvenile justice workers. 

PRINT a copy of our training brochure 2013