Upcoming Workshops

Specialist in face-to-face or virtual training.

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Event Venue Date Description
First-Up – client response training for administration staff - 08 August August 8, 2024 9:30 am

Administration workers are often the first persons with whom a client of your agency will have contact. When that initial contact is by an upset, highly anxious or angry client, it is not easy to find the right response. This workshop equips and supports administration workers in their role of providing ‘first-up’ responses to clients and members of the public who present in person at reception or over the phone. We consider how to interact calmly and safely with people who are presenting in a state of crisis or affected by alcohol or drugs, including how to convey empathy while encouraging de-escalation. A workshop for all administration workers who may be ‘first-up’ in responding helpfully in difficult situations or helping to de-escalate potential crises.

Who should attend?

Administration workers in human service agencies who have direct ‘front counter’ or telephone contact with clients and members of the public.

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For The Record - effective recording for child and youth work August 27, 2024 9:30 am

Recording – from case notes to formal reports – is essential to effectively work with children, young people and families. This highly interactive workshop examines the art of recording in various contexts. Learn how to write well structured notes and reports 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, and increase their confidence in producing effective records to support practice.

 

Who should attend?

Government and community agency workers, family support workers, youth workers, foster and kinship care support workers, intervention service workers.

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Digging Deeper – Risk Assessment with Vulnerable Children and Families (Online workshop) September 10, 2024 9:30 am

Developed by Chris-Maree Sultmann who has trained in this area for 25 years, this research-informed workshop on risk assessment, developed specifically for Queensland practitioners, positions you to maintain currency in your practice with vulnerable children and families. Assessing risk remains central to supporting families in protecting and caring for their children, yet many practitioners remain unclear about the fundamentals of risk assessment work. The complexities of this work are many, as is the responsibility to ‘get it right’. Tensions exist where some practitioners find it tricky to integrate risk assessment with strengths-oriented practice, or to work together with families in identifying risk and building safety for children. This workshop ‘digs deeper’ into these questions, identifying the concepts, processes and skills fundamental to risk assessment and exploring how to put these into practice with families.

Who should attend?

Staff from Family and Child Connect services, Intensive Family Support services and any practitioners from across the health, domestic and family violence, education and community sectors who have a direct role in working with vulnerable children and families or who supervise and guide others in this.

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Repairing Broken Threads - reconnection and reunification with children and families (Online workshop) October 15, 2024 9:30 am

Work to reconnect or reunify children, young people and their families is complex, sensitive, challenging and rewarding. It must be done well. We know that most children and young people living away from their families will return home – at some point, in some way. Even for those who cannot ‘go home’, research suggests there are benefits in family connection. The craft of this work lies in how to determine the optimal level and nature of this connection for individual children and young people. If you are interested in exploring this area of practice with a view to clarifying and consolidating your understanding, skills and approach, this is the workshop for you. Contemporary thinking and research inform activities designed to develop your knowledge and skills in: assessing safety; planning effective support and intervention; and collaborative work with children, young people, their families and carers in this emotive and critical work.

Who should attend?

Government and non-government practitioners supporting vulnerable children, young people and families, residential and SILS workers, foster care support workers from kin-finding and kin-support services.

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Holding the Space - effective supervision for supervisors November 7, 2024 9:30 am

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 helps supervisors in child and family welfare and youth services to understand supervision as a specific area of practice and to develop their practice skills in this area. Participants consider contemporary thinking and knowledge around supervision frameworks and models and are supported to use this in developing their supervision practice approach. This workshop is delivered by experts in supervision who have delivered supervision for over 25 years.

Who should attend?

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

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DOWNLOAD THE 2024 ENCOMPASS TRAINING CALENDAR

cover of the 2024 encompass training calendar

Workshops not currently scheduled but available for delivery on request

Making the Invisible… Visible – shining a light on child sexual abuse in family-based care

If you work in statutory child protection or with children and young people living away from home, this is a workshop that you cannot afford to miss! The Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was a significant process that led to the unearthing of key learnings about how to protect children from sexual abuse in institutions. The Commission established that the risk of sexual abuse for children and young people living away from home can be only too real. To protect children in care from sexual abuse practitioners need to be knowledgeable about the dynamics of sexual offending as well as being able to assess the risks of sexual abuse across 4 key dimensions; and then implement safety strategies across the 4 domains of safety. The safety of children in family-based care is the responsibility of all professionals involved in a child’s life. Practitioners need to know what they are looking for and must have an openness to seeing it.

In this workshop you will learn about the dynamics of child sexual offending, the 3 typologies of offenders, the process of child grooming and the 4 dimensions of risk and safety for child sexual abuse when children live away from home. Practitioners will walk away from this day feeling empowered about how to strengthen the safety of children in family-based care.

Who should attend? Foster and Kinship Care Support Workers, out-of-home care workers, Specialist OOHC workers, Residential Youth Workers, Statutory Child Protection Workers, Team Leaders and any professional connected with family-based care.

Family Ties – enabling kin to care for family

The research is in! Children living away from home need to be cared for by kin whenever possible. However there can be some challenges to negotiate. Family relationships and interactions, cultural matters and worries about capacity or intergenerational trauma can all impact here. This workshop uses contemporary research and thinking to spotlight
how workers can be most effective in collaborating with families to enable and promote safe and responsive care by kin for children and young people. If we understand care by kin as ‘family supporting family’ then the question for workers is how to best support, resource and enable this?

Who should attend? Workers actively supporting care by kin from government and non-government services, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander agencies and non-Indigenous organisations.

Eyes Wide Open – assessing risk in foster and kinship care

There are no risk-free options in protecting children. Foster and kinship care can bring huge benefits and also some risk. This workshop offers foster and kinship care support workers the opportunity to clarify and develop their practice approach to ensure that they are tuned in to the structural risks of family-based care, as well as individual risk profiles for children and carers themselves. This workshop aims to promote  purposeful and effective support work with carers that achieves safety, stability and continuity for children and young people.

Who should attend? Foster and Kinship Care Support workers in government and community agencies.

A Cook’s Tour of Change

Interested in knowing more about how to support the people you work with in achieving and sustaining change over time? This is the workshop for you! Our brand-new workshop gives you a “Cook’s Tour” of contemporary change theory – a rapid review of current research and thinking on change, informed by change theorists and the
neuroscience of change. Participate in activities that explore how to utilise this knowledge with the people you support in your practice and in your workplace. Together we will focus on these core questions:

  • What can change theory tell me about how to understand change?
  • What is my job as a ‘change agent’ and how can I actively apply change theory in my practice?
  • What is effective in achieving and sustaining the change that people want in their lives?

Who should attend? Any practitioner or leader working, supporting and/or coaching children or young people, individuals or families in achieving change.

Bridging Troubled Waters – resolving workplace issues and difficult team dynamics (3hr workshop)

Positive team dynamics underpin effective workgroups and when all is well, we may take this harmony for granted. But when conflict or personality clashes persist, everyone is affected and productivity can plummet. This workshop considers the tricky issues in managing workplace conflict and tension and restoring harmony. How do you engage workers who do not respond to the usual supervisory efforts to address unacceptable behaviour? How do you use your own personality and negotiation skills to ensure fair dealing while getting to the source of trouble? What strategies and techniques might help? This workshop is for competent supervisors who need a few more ‘tricks up their sleeve’ for resolving workgroup issues and for those who want to avoid such issues arising.esolving workgroup issues and for those who want to avoid such issues arising.

Who should attend? Team leaders, supervisors and managers responsible for workgroups in both government and community agencies.

Building Bridges – child protection practice for educators

This workshop is specifically designed for teachers and school personnel. The concept of ‘building bridges’ acknowledges the roles of educators as conduits between home and school in promoting student wellbeing. This workshop covers legislative requirements for identifying and responding to harm to students, along with core concepts of effective child protection practice. Case scenarios guide participants to consider child protection risk and protective factors, to determine risk of significant harm and to decide the most appropriate course of action. We consider contemporary research about how best to support families within the school community to help prevent child protection crises.

Who should attend? Teachers, principals, school counsellors, school nurses and designated student protection officers.

Building the Picture for Educators – identifying and responding to harm and sexual behaviour

This workshop equips educators with knowledge and skills to meet mandatory training requirements for identifying and responding to harm. It considers concepts of abuse/neglect and likely harm to children, within the context of legal requirements and duty of care. It explores children’s sexual development and distinguishes between more
usual developmental behaviours and those considered problematic, providing a framework that guides educators in responding to all types of sexual behaviour. There is opportunity for participants to discuss behaviour and concerns encountered in work settings so that they leave the workshop with more confidence and potential solutions.

Who should attend? care educators, child care directors, family day care educators, outside school hours (OSHC) educators and directors.

DNA – development ‘N’ attachment for child protection work

Together, child development and attachment theory form a critical cornerstone underpinning practice across child protection, family support and youthwork. Yet many workers say they have only a hazy understanding of critical theoretical concepts and little real idea of how to use these in their practice. This one day workshop draws on
contemporary developments in research and theory to provide a practical working knowledge of child development and attachment for frontline child protection workers. Participants explore the implications of theoretical concepts for assessment and intervention and consider how to integrate theory with daily practice in their specific role.

Who should attend? Front-line workers, their team leaders and senior practitioners across the child protection, family support and youth sectors.

Leading Self and Others – being an effective leader in the human services sector

This workshop is tailored to the needs of your leadership team by drawing upon contemporary research and thinking about how to maximise individual leadership skills to meet the multi faceted challenges within the human services context. Being a ‘realistic’ leader is key and starts with understanding what you bring to your leadership role and how self awareness and knowledge is the springboard for developing your skills further.

Fine tuning your individual leadership skills is only part of the story – how you use these skills across all aspects of your work with clients, your team and other organisational leaders is also a key focus of this workshop.