These courses are designed to develop specialist skills for those who work in the community sector, healthcare or education, from management to frontline roles. Built around key concepts like person-centred care, self-determination, and strengths-based practice, these courses are based on developing best practice skills and exploring emerging issues.
While everyone is welcome, this content will be particularly useful for those working in areas such as disability, mental health, aged care, housing and homelessness, CaLD communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, LGBTIQA+, youth, women, employment, family and domestic violence, children and families, justice, and community development.
See our calendar for all scheduled courses in this category & book a space online now.
If you have a team/group of people that require training, feel free to book online on any upcoming public course. However, we can also provide dedicated courses just for you - at our premises or yours - from our catalogue or bespoke. Please contact us so that we can discuss your exact needs.
Our body image can have profound implications for our physical and mental health, confidence and self-esteem. This practical course explores the issues around personal body image and how it is formed, along with the dangers of negative body image.
A suicide prevention plan is a powerful prevention tool containing personalised strategies for a suicidal person to draw upon, even when alone. This important course provides the skills and resources to create an effective and personally meaningful plan to help save vulnerable lives.
DBT treatment is a powerful cognitive-behavioural approach, which helps people integrate the seemingly opposite strategies of acceptance and change. This course introduces the concepts behind DBT and provides a suite of practical tools for personal or client use.
Designed for anyone working in human services, community or caring professions, this course provides insight and practical skills for working with people who face issues with substance use, focussing on the crucial areas of habit, addiction and behaviour change.
Coercive control is a pattern of behaviour such as assault, threats and humiliation used to harm, punish, or frighten a victim. This insightful course explores the nature of coercive control and gaslighting and empowers participants to recognise and ultimately combat them.
Mental health symptoms and best practice responses vary with age, and age-related cognitive changes also impact mental health. Gain an understanding of the mental health issues facing older people in order to respond effectively to the needs of clients and loved ones.
Emotional grounding techniques are sensory experiences which anchor us in the present and help us manage emotions and maintain wellbeing. This course explores a range of sensory activities which can be used by individuals as coping tools and by professionals with their clients.
Identifying and responding appropriately to mental health issues can often be complex when a person also has other disabilities. Learn how mental health and other disabilities interact and acquire the skills needed to identify and support clients with a dual diagnosis.
Prevention is better than cure, but often our response to situations of abuse and neglect are left until after harm has been caused. This course explores ways that professionals, support workers and family can recognise and prevent abusive situations before they occur.
Unlike teaching, mentoring or counselling, a coach’s role is to help another find solutions, improve skills and expand their competence. This course looks at how to become a great workplace coach and provide others with support that can fuel incremental improvement.
Person-centred care is all about responding to individual needs and preferences when providing health and community services. In an era of consumer-choice funding and sector evolution, service provision is all about moving beyond the “one size fits all” approaches of the past, to individual focus, personalised planning and responsive, nimble services.
Personality disorders are one of the most misunderstood and stigmatised mental health conditions. This practical and accessible workshop is designed to sort the myths from the facts and empower better service provision.
Our moods and emotions can be a powerful force in our lives, impacting work, relationships, productivity and ultimately our quality of life. Rather than exploring the complex causes of mental health and emotional variability, this course focuses on a series of practical and effective tools anyone can use on a daily basis to manage our moods and deal with emotions more effectively.
Drawing on the science of stress and evidence-based anxiety management, this course will strengthen participants’ understanding of the experience of stress and provide practical strategies for dealing with and managing worry, stress and anxiety.
Culture plays a huge role in the way we view the world, impacting our expectations, values and perspectives. This course explores practical ways to be more inclusive, responsive and appropriate when working with clients or colleagues from cultures other than our own.
Led by an experienced Aboriginal trainer, this course will help participants familiarise themselves with aspects of Aboriginal culture and explore ways to make their organisations and communication more welcoming, inclusive and culturally safe for Aboriginal people.
Many of the communication cues we rely upon when connecting with others and providing support are in fact non-verbal indicators such as body language, facial expression and subtle positioning changes. When separated by distance, it takes a special set of communication and interpersonal skills to establish rapport, gauge client reactions and ensure clear understanding.
Like many aspects of our lives the experience of trauma can be passed between generations. Explore the particular effects of intergenerational trauma and how it presents in people’s lives to assist in providing more appropriate and empathetic services.
Based on the social model of disability, and taking a strengths-based perspective, this course explores neurodiversity simply as a type of human variation and looks at ways we can better understand and support neurodiverse clients and stakeholders.
Knowing how to intervene in a case of danger or injustice is a core life skill which can often protect the vulnerable and prevent serious harm. This course teaches the practical steps a bystander can take to reduce risk and make a difference in the moment.
Self-harm involves the deliberate causing of pain or injury to oneself, usually as an extreme way of trying to cope with distressing or painful feelings. This evidence-driven course demystifies self-harming behaviours and explores the diverse forms self-harm can take.
This lifesaving course is all about what ordinary people can do to reduce the risk of suicide among colleagues and the wider community. It explores preventative measures, how to talk about suicide, intervention skills and how to get help.
Recovery Oriented Practice is an approach to mental health services which prioritises holistic wellbeing, self-determination and consumer-centred practice.
Service providers and practitioners need to take an individualised, strength-based approach to service provision and be able to form strong recovery alliances.
While many income streams and traditional funding sources have diminished in the COVID era, other opportunities have opened up.
This course is an overview of everything your non-profit organisation, small business or charity needs to know for diversifying income and financial sustainability.
Many aspects of our lives involve informal but often vitally important counselling situations. This two-day course teaches participants a series of structured, discussion-based counselling tools which will allow them to engage and support others when required.
Over half of people with a serious mental illness are known to misuse substances, while 84% of substance misusers have some sort of mental health disorder. This course explores the complex interrelationship between mental health and substance use.
How we respond to a potential crisis can make the difference between smooth resolution and an emergency situation. De-escalation skills are all about developing responses which prevent violence and defuse volatile situations. Based on our popular standard De-escalation course, this specialist version is designed especially for disability sector professionals.
ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) is an interactive two-day workshop that will qualify participants as ASIST-trained caregivers, able to intervene and help prevent the immediate risk of suicide.
Advocacy is all about speaking up about our rights, preferences and needs and communicating clearly about what we want. Whether you are advocating for yourself, a loved one or a client, this course will provide you with the skills, tools and knowledge to have a real impact.
Self-regulation of emotions is a constant process that governs our responses to our experiences and environment. This course introduces a set of tools and strategies for modulating responses and managing mood, which can be used personally or with clients.
Volunteers are the lifeblood of many community organisations, and managing them effectively is every bit as important and challenging as managing paid staff.
Strengths-based practice focuses on building a person’s strengths and aptitudes, rather than working on their problems. This course develops strengths-based practitioners’ skills, as well as providing foundation knowledge for those new to this approach.
Support, safety and social change. One in three Australian women and one in nine men have experienced physical violence at home, and one woman per week is killed by a current or former intimate partner.
The experience of trauma can have an effect throughout a person’s lifetime, influencing the way they think, work, form relationships and make choices. Gain a better understanding of the trauma experience and be equipped to provide more appropriate and empathetic services.
Sexual orientation and gender identity can have a profound impact on a person’s needs. This course provides contemporary education about the diversity of human sexuality and gender identity, as a foundation for improving the workplace environment and service provision.
Following on from our introductory De-escalating Conflict and Aggression, this course further develops skills in preventing violence and responding to aggression, covering more specialised situations and behaviours that any of us could encounter in the community.
Dissociation is a mental process where a person disconnects from their thoughts, feelings, memories or sense of identity. This course explores the nature of dissociative illnesses and provides a stigma-free overview of causes, symptoms and treatments.
Part of ensuring human dignity is accepting the right of each person to take risks and make choices. This course explores how we can ensure that legal and safety requirements are met while maximising an individual’s self-determination and freedom.
The transformative power of deep understanding. Empathy is a key element of Emotional Intelligence and has been hailed as a twenty-first century “superpower” for anyone dealing with human beings. Going far beyond intellectual understanding or sympathy, which might be considered “feeling for” someone, empathy is all about “feeling with”.
Advocacy means speaking out on behalf of someone’s rights or best interests and systemic advocacy is about how we improve the system to make things better for everyone, rather than just an individual. This course provides foundation knowledge for effective systemic advocacy.