Dumfries & Galloway Carers Centre (360G-SCVO-a0g0N00002FuYvLQAV)

This application is for funding to enable a 4 day course to be provided to staff to aid staff development, build staff resilience and further develop emotional intelligence. Carers Centre staff endeavour to provide a service based on our core values, see above: Over the last few years the service has become increasingly busy with increasing numbers of Carers. Last year support was provided to over 1400 individual Carers and Young Carers with 725 of these being new to the service. In turn the complexity of the cases that staff are dealing with has increased and this puts added pressure on the staff. In preparation of for the Carers Act implementation prior to April 2018 all staff have completed Good Conversations training and more recently training on Psychological Approaches to providing One to One Support. The organisation would like to invest in the staff skills and competencies by providing a 4 day course over a 6-9 month period to assist staff to further develop skills for managing the stresses and anxieties of working life as well as techniques for developing resilience and managing healthy relationships. The course will also be supportive to the Carers that are employed with us and those that will become Carers in the future while employed with the service. The course outline is below: Day 1: Awareness & Automatic Pilot and Living in our Heads • Recognising the tendency to be on automatic pilot and getting lost in rumination • Noticing the chatter of the mind and how the chatter tends to control our reactions to service users, colleagues and workplace events/situations Day 2: Gathering the Scattered Mind & Recognising Aversion • Becoming familiar with behaviour of the Mind working away in the background to complete unfinished work tasks and striving for work based future goals • Developing the skill of 'coming back' to the task in hand by seeing more clearly what 'takes us away', distracts us • Recognising when we try to cling to jobs and avoid other jobs Day 3: Allowing and Letting Be & Thoughts are not Facts • Relating differently to experiences by bringing a sense of allowing and letting be, without judging or trying to make it different • Bringing an attitude of acceptance which is a major part of taking care of oneself • Realising that our thoughts are just thoughts and that the same pattern of thought recur again and again Learning to stand back from our thoughts and see them as passing states of mind, negative thinking as distorted products of those mind states and reducing stress. Day 4: How can I best take care of myself and Maintaining and Extending New Learning • Using skilful action to take care of ourselves in the face of stress and anxiety. • Learning how to respond more promptly and effectively to stress/anxiety (both in the workplace and home) by learning to recognise our personal pattern of warning signs • Maintaining a balance in work and life • Preparing for the future "what do I do when I notice early warning signs?"