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Boundaries are essential to practice in the helping professions, as they make caring sustainable, and protect skilled workers from compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization and burnout.  

Boundary practice encourages us to consider our own energy and how we’re spending it, and to understand pre-existing patterns of relating that attract us to the helping professions while also making boundary practice more difficult. 

In this workshop, participants will learn about the advantages and disadvantages of different patterns of relating, with a view to becoming better stewards of their professional energy, and making their self-care practices more personal and effective. Social service providers will gain a better understanding of how they feel and think at work relative to how they are negotiating boundaries with clients and co-workers. 

Boundary work ensures staff are bringing their best selves to the work they love so much.

Workshop Highlights:

• The context of human service work and the helping professions
• Three boundary styles and how to recognize them
• Somatic exercises and boundary practice
• Applying boundary practice to client work, co-workers, and organizations
• Interactive exercises in partners/small groups 
• A review of self-care – what it is, and what it isn’t
• Practice examples and scenarios 

Dates and Times

Tuesday, March 11 & Tuesday, March 18, 2025 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. 

About the Facilitator 

Jodie McDonald is a Registered Social Worker with over 20 years experience in the non-profit sector, working in crisis and suicide intervention, family support, and mental health. She has an MSW specializing in Community Development and is particularly interested in the impact of frontline human service work on the worker, the traits and experiences that draw workers to this field, and how to best support these valuable people in their essential work. Jodie teaches in the Studies in Women and Gender Department at Vancouver Island University, and is also an Integrative Body Psychotherapist in private practice.

The price of this workshop is per-person. 

This free workshop will be taking place via Zoom. Participants will be emailed a link to join the session. 

This workshop is not guaranteed to run. We need a minimum number of participants.