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What do you need to stay in the work?

Working in human services provides us with rich interpersonal experiences that deepen our practice and help us grow both personally and professionally. In the best of times, we feel aligned with our values and make contributions to a more caring, just world. At other times, we feel overwhelmed by challenges that impact our well-being, certainty, and commitment to the work.

“Relational Practice” describes the skills needed to build and sustain health-promoting relationships with clients, families, colleagues, and others. In this workshop, we will explore themes of grief and loss, secondary distress, toxic work environments, complex clients, and various forms of oppression as they arise at work. With reference to the emerging framework of “critical hope,” we will create our own mission statement or narrative for our practice to help keep hope at the centre of our work.

Workshop Highlights:

• Taking an inventory of our vulnerabilities at work, and the needs we are seeking to meet
• Discerning which challenges are personal and which are organic hazards in the work
• Understanding structural abandonment, ethical issues, and moral injury in the workplace
• Applying the principles of “critical hope” (Kari Grain, 2022) to our work in the helping professions

Dates and Times

Tuesday, March 7th and Thursday, March 9th from 9:30 AM -12:30 PM PST both days. 

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.

The price of this workshop is per-person. This workshop is not guaranteed to run. We need a minimum number of participants. 

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

Registration will close on March 2, 2023.