Compassion Fatigue Solutions

with Françoise Mathieu, M.Ed., CCC.
Location: Donald Gordon Conference Centre Kingston, On.

A beautiful location and great food. A nice starting point for a two day intensive retreat to become (or hone your skills as) a compassion fatigue trainer.

Workshop Size
Spaces limited to a maximum of 20 participants.
Certificates of Completion will be provided
Cost (includes lunch and morning and afternoon breaks): $598.00 CND
This fee covers cost of materials including training manuals and handout templates.

Workshop Description
Some past participants of our one day Compassion Fatigue workshop (Walking the Walk) expressed an interest in receiving help in designing a workshop to bring back to their communities and developing skills and knowledge base to deliver compassion fatigue workshops themselves. This train the trainer workshop offers tools, handouts, strategies, training material and marketing strategies to adapt Walking the Walk to your community's specific needs (and to your own presentation style). You do not need to have attended WtheW in the past to benefit from this training.

Because of the small size of the group, we will customize certain aspects of the training to your specific needs. A questionnaire will be sent ahead of time to establish your needs/goals and objectives and aim to fulfill as many of these as possible.

Day one will be experiential (you will participate in a one day CF workshop) and Day two will discuss tools, strategies and techniques to develop and deliver the workshops on your own and become a CF educator and trainer.

What differentiates this workshop from other educational sessions out there is the extra layer of understanding and validation that we hope to convey to our workshop participants. Therefore, the train the trainer workshop is designed to take you deep first, to gain a true and thorough understanding of your own relationship to CF. Then we go into the didactic details (what to teach, how to teach) and finally talk about the mechanics of the whole process (how to customize this for your own work needs/goals etc.). More info: www.compassionfatigue.ca

Photo of Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Canada, from commons.wikimedia.org

Here is what has been going on this week in Kingston Ontario.

If you live in my part of the world, you too will have been enjoying the deep freeze that we have been experiencing during the past week or so. I run outside throughout the the winter and spent the first part of my childhood in the arctic so I am not too fazed by cold weather but when my eyelashes freeze together, I tend to draw the line at outdoor pursuits. I did make one exception to this on Sunday as I was in Ottawa and had the opportunity to skate, for the very first time, on the Rideau Canal which is considered to be the longest natural frozen ice rink in the world, or the second if you are from Winnipeg, who claim to have the world's longest natural frozen ice rink in the world!

Skating on the Rideau was fantastic, and had it not been minus 25 celsius and had I been sans kids, I would have loved to skate the full length of it. I don't know why exactly, but skating outside makes me feel blissfully happy and at peace.

Do you have an activity like that?

I am currently working on the Compassion Fatigue Workbook which is a distillation of my one day compassion fatigue workshop but is designed to be used as a solo or group tool. I have several ongoing projects right now to develop more distance learning materials which are far more affordable than travelling to attend a workshop or bringing a speaker to your community. Let me know if you have any special requests or ideas. Stay warm.

I am very pleased to announce that after many months of work and a very helpful computer programmer, my bookstore is finally ready. Now, this is a very soft launch as there are only two products in the bookstore at the moment (an ebooklet and a Train the Trainer workbook) but it will grow over the coming months. The goal of this bookstore is to create a web-based resource centre for helpers seeking distance learning resources and workbooks to assist them as individuals and/or as trainers.

Go take a look: www.cfsolutionsbookstore.com

Currently available:

Ebook: Designing and marketing a compassion fatigue workshop in 10 key steps

Contains:
• Self assessment exercises to help you evaluate where you are starting from.
• Strategies to identify and develop your very own workshop style
• Key books and resources in the field
• Marketing and promotion: lessons learned and things you should know and many more tips, ideas and strategies.


Compassion Fatigue Train the Trainer - Workbook

This manual offers tools to help you design your own CF workshops and assist you to become a compassion fatigue trainer. The material included in this manual is based on WHP’s one day workshop Walking the Walk: Creative Tools for Transforming Compassion Fatigue which has been offered across Canada since 2001.

Enclosed in this manual you will find:

• A description of the 17 Educational and experiential goals of the Walking the Walk course.
• A extensive resource list (books, links to websites, articles, etc.)
• An appendix with handouts that can be used for your training sessions.
• A copy of three articles written by WHP: Low Impact Disclosure , Running on
Empty and Transforming compassion fatigue into compassion satisfaction: top 12 self-care tips for helpers.

Yesterday, (January 14th, 2009), the Globe and Mail published the results from the 5th annual survey of "the best small and medium employers in Canada" by Queen's School of Business.

I was very curious to read more on the key elements that made these companies the best, and my hunch was confirmed: Among the top companies, the focus is on empowering employees, rewarding effort and encouraging growth among staff by supporting ongoing training. Flexible work hours are also encouraged and hierarchy discouraged (some of our hospitals a ways to go on some of these points...)

"At top-ranked Protegra [the company who won best employer award], employees are encouraged to participate in goal setting and decision making at monthly staff meetings. [...] At top companies, not only do employees have a say in setting direction, they are also given wide berth to run with their ideas."

I am fascinated by these findings as they are exactly what we recommend to minimise compassion fatigue and enhance wellness among helping professionals. The top strategies for health care organizations wanting to mitigate the impact of compassion fatigue are related to offering flexible work hours, providing staff with positive feedback, supporting continuing education and genuinely inviting staff to contribute to the direction and manner in which the organization is progressing in the future.

So, I'm sure many of you are wondering who came in the top five? Here they are:

Number 1: Protegra Inc., Winnipeg (IT and business consulting)
Number 2: Miele Canada, Ontario (Appliance maker)
Number 3: Gibraltar Solutions Inc., Mississauga (IT and consulting)
Number 4: ISL Engineering and Land Services Inc. Edmonton (Engineering)
Number 5: Hood Group, Edmonton (Engineering, construction and environmental consulting)

More on this at globeandmail.com/smallbusiness

If you are interested in exploring this issue some more, I would highly recommend that you read the book "Maverick" by Ricardo Semler. Semler owns a large successful manufacturing company in Brazil and this book chronicles how he dismantled the entire corporate structure of his company and reaped the rewards tenfold. He also describes how he obtained the help of his staff to weather through a severe recession in Brazil in the early 90s. It's a highly readable book, I would recommend it to any manager interested in exploring this further.

There are times that are simple yet very precious moments in our lives. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get so task-oriented and "completion-focused" (sadly, strong features of the enneagram 3 for those of you who know about the enneag.) that I lose my sense of humour and fun. This is something that I know about myself and try to keep at bay. Enter children - they are the best people in the world to force you out of your task-oriented focus (as right now, I am writing this but I can hear little feet coming down the stairs, back later).

Ok, I am back. On Sunday, my kids and I decided to make sushi for the first time. Now these are not works of art, I will grant you, but it led to a wonderful conversation about food, culinary traditions and eating with one's hands, something my 8 year old son is very keen to do again - "but you do it every day sweetie" I said, given that using cutlery is an ongoing battle with him at the best of times. So now for the next few Sundays, we are going to explore "foods that are eaten with our hands" from various countries of the world. I am thinking of Ethiopian next week, if I can find Tef flour to make the large, spongy breads that are used as plates and spoon.

I have several exciting announcements coming up later on today or Wednesday, come back and read some more when you have a chance.

This is a photo of two of my nieces rolling in the snow. One of them is 17 years old and still enjoys making snow angels. When was the last time you rolled in the snow? (on purpose, I mean, not wiping out in front of your driveway, as I will likely do this morning as we have received a large amount of snow and ice during the night)

I hope you had a chance to take some time off during the holidays. I was very fortunate in being able to take two full weeks off and I spent them eating (many times per day!), catching up on my sleep and connecting with friends and family. It was a welcome break after such a hectic Fall. I am now fully rested and looking forward to the next chapter in this journey.

News for the start of January 2009

Compassion Fatigue Train the Trainer:
If you are considering attending the March Train the Trainer workshop in Kingston, I encourage you not to delay in registering to avoid disappointment as the workshop is limited to 20 participants. For more information visit the link at www.compassionfatigue.ca

Compassion Fatigue Solutions Bookstore
I am putting the finishing touches on the Compassion Fatigue Solutions Bookstore, where you will be able to purchase workbooks and training materials in the months to come. This site should be going live in a week or so. I will send an announcement when it is ready. At first, there will only be a few products available on the bookstore, but I hope to build on that in the future, to provide more distance learning materials for those of you who are looking for more training opportunities.

Compassion Fatigue News Group
Charles Figley has updated his CF news group and has moved it to a much more user friendly site on Google. Consider joining this community of helpers interested in CF-related topics. To find out more cut and paste this link in your browser: http://groups.google.com/group/compassionfatigue/web/google-alerts-about-compassion-fatigue

I will be posting again in the coming days with more news and views. Here is wishing you a healthy and balanced 2009.