Strategies to Manage Vicarious Trauma & Compassion Fatigue
Confronting stories and challenging presentations take a toll
People who are experiencing physical or emotional trauma, vulnerability or risk at work often leads to a variety of reactions including vicarious traumatisation, compassion fatigue, and burnout. The last few years have been undeniably tough with COVID escalating and compounding these experiences for all staff.
Action on vicarious trauma is of paramount importance to these organisations and their staff. Failing to embed vicarious trauma mitigation strategies, supervision or self-care for these workers can have a significant impact on their emotional wellbeing, their ability to effectively perform their jobs, their compassion for patients/clients, the quality of service delivery and their longevity in the role.
Impacts are often cumulative and if unaddressed, affect emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing, personal relationships and professional capacity.
Whether you are personally impacted in your work, or seeking to address the risks and realities of vicarious trauma for your organisation, this seminar will help to unpack, explore and offer strategies for what you can do differently today, and every day to actively reduce the emotional toll and build resilience.
This half-day online seminar balances presentation, discussion and experiential exercises, providing a safe forum to explore the interaction between you and your work. You will develop a ‘tool kit’ for self-care and strategies to safeguard and enhance resilience, whether for yourself or for your wider team.
Key benefits
Gain heightened understanding of vicarious trauma – secondary traumatic stress – compassion fatigue – burnout – grief
Explore risk and resilience factors on a personal and professional level
Identify how post-traumatic transference and countertransference impact and play-out
Clearly comprehend the signs and symptoms in yourself and others
Explore the interaction between you and your work
Apply self-care and strategies to ensure you protect yourself and build resilience as a high-exposure worker
Safeguard and enhance your emotional well being and ability to effectively perform your job
Avoid compassion fatigue and burnout and continue to thrive in your role
Naomi Halpern
Director, Delphi Training & Consulting
Naomi is trained as a social worker, but has also worked with children in short stay emergency care, homeless youth, and convicted offenders in government and non-government organisations, providing advocacy, psychosocial education, recreational opportunities, skills training, supervision and counselling.
Naomi Halpern
Naomi is trained as a social worker but has also worked with children in short-stay emergency care, homeless youth, and convicted offenders in government and non-government organisations, providing advocacy, psychosocial education, recreational opportunities, skills training, supervision and counselling.
Naomi provides clinical consultation for complex post-traumatic stress, dissociative disorders and related impacts of childhood developmental trauma and abuse including self-harming behaviour, suicidality and substance abuse, for mental health professionals working with adult victim-survivors of intergenerational trauma, gender-based violence, and other trauma. She also works as a consultant and trainer for law firms, providing trauma-informed training and supporting lawyers’ mental health and wellbeing. She has a wealth of experience working with people across socioeconomic groups, faiths, and sexual orientation.
She is a skilled speaker and trainer and has presented training about complex and developmental trauma, vicarious trauma, resilience building and workplace wellbeing through Delphi and the United Nations across all Australian States and territories and worldwide.
She is a Fellow of the international Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (2017) and recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award (2022).
Since 2009, Naomi has been a consultant to the United Nations developing and delivering a broad range of trauma-informed programs to personnel in missions and duty stations around the world. Most recently she developed a Gatekeeper suicide prevention training for Safety and Security Services and trauma-informed awareness training for the Office of the Special Coordinator on improving the UN’s response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, the Ombudsman and Ethics Units and Human Resources and Services Department.
Who will attend?
The course is for representatives from first responder, frontline, high risk and exposure organisations as well as those working with adult survivors of complex trauma, homelessness, welfare, legal & justice teams working with victims and witnesses of crime, corrective servivces, child protection and social work, domestic & family violence professionals, emergency departments, psychiatric facilities, hospitals & aged care facilities, teaching professionals, and community service organisations.
It is appropriate for all workers who work with trauma clients and/or are exposed to traumatic material, information or content. It is also relevant for team leaders/managers who are responsible for staff wellbeing or those who wish to better support vicarious resilience in the workplace.
Agenda
Prior to the seminar, you will receive a Vicarious Trauma, Compassion Fatigue and Burn-out assessment and Vicarious Trauma checklist to complete and use as your personal guide for the session.
Welcome from The Hatchery & tech tips
Identifying and Recognising Signs and Symptoms
- Differentiating vicarious trauma – secondary traumatic stress – compassion fatigue – burnout – grief
- Identifying signs and symptoms in yourself or others
- Post-traumatic transference and countertransference
- Risk and resilience factors
- Reducing stigma and barriers to support
- Self-care iceberg
Break
Building Vicarious Resilience
- Four branches of Self Care: Mind – Body – Emotion – Meaning
- Fostering possibilities and building capacity for vicarious resilience
- Developing a self-care plan
- Setting a self-care goal
- Clearly delineating the boundaries of a role especially when exposed to difficult material and information
Reflection, Supervision and Support
- Three tiers to mitigating vicarious trauma
- Initiating a conversation with a colleague
- Buddy systems
- Responding in a timely and effective manner to the signs of vicarious trauma
- Unpacking effective ways of debriefing and how to avoid unhelpful ways of responding
- Post-traumatic growth and vicarious resilience
- The role of (and the necessity for) trauma-informed reflection, supervision and self-care
Close of seminar
All times are shown in AEDT
Pricing
Early bird savings until 27 October
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $300
Early bird savings until 10 November
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $200
Early bird savings until 24 November
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $100
Standard price
+GST
Bring your colleagues and save with a group discount
Groups of 10 save 10%
Groups of 20 save 20%
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