‘in the last eight year, I have encountered many challenges both as a facilitator and as the manager of our support group. I’ve documented our experiences, trained our facilitators, and brought all our learnings together in creating a manual. I hope by sharing this with the other people, we have more mental health activists that can get a better start and do great work. ’
-Xiaojie Qin
Director of CandleX
This year would mark our eight years of running our support group in Beijing. Seeing more need from emerging community members to do more on mental health, we are now providing training to prepare individuals to get on the path of mental health advocates and group leaders. This upcoming training provides practical guidance and knowledge based on accumulated experiences on challenges our facilitators encountered, ethical considerations, issues we have had running the support group.
We will also share our internal training mannual that outline structure of CandleX’s signature program, mental health support group, and the step by step facilitating tasks of our facilitators. By doing this, we hope to make empower more people to get an easier start on creating their own mental health groups and projects.
Who Should Attend:
- People interested in pursuing mental health work
- Mental Health Peer support facilitators
- Community mental health advocates
- Anyone interested in get on the path of becoming a mental health professional
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the principles of group facilitation and group dynamics
- Learn effective communication skills
- Develop conflict resolution skills
- Develop strategies for creating a safe and inclusive space for group members
- Learn about self-care and how to manage burnout
- Get CandleX’s internal support group manual as a reference for you to start your own
Certificate:
You will get a certificate from us to indicate that you have completed this 3-hour training.
More About the Training Content
We created a question bank based on facilitator’s debrief, which we do after every session and document them. Over the years, we have engaged in discussions and mini-trainings amongst the members of our support group program team members as well as external experts to answer these questions. To make sure that this training is relevant to the training participants, we would like to have you pick out what questions you want to get answered so we could tailor the training more to the confirmed participants.
Training Question Bank
Facilitator’s Self Awareness and Management
What is the skill that a facilitator needs to keep in mind when confronted with difficult situations in general?
How to proceed with the session as a facilitator when feeling triggered by a topic that has been or is being discussed?
What are the traps a facilitator could fall into when facilitating in a group?
Facilitator’s self-care: there are responsibilities in being a facilitator, as well as benefits of feeling the meaning of life by giving, learning new skills. How do you balance your responsibilities to the group without compromising your own wellbeing?
Conflict Resolution Skills:
How to deal with conflicts amongst participants when happening in session?
How to model disagreement respectfully?
What should we do when we disagree with our peer facilitators?
Group Dynamics Management Skills
How to manage a participant who gives advices when not asked?
What to do when a participant is in distress when sharing, intense emotional reaction during self-disclosure?
How do respond to situations where a participant damages the progress of the session? How do we know when we need to take that person out of the room?
What to do or not to do if there’s prolonged silence in session?
Learn how to manage one or a few people who cannot stop talking or who interrupt others inappropriately?
Improve the Operation
Should the group sessions have a topic or it’s better to offer a topic free space?
How do we get people to give feedback more?
What negative feedback we’ve gotten so far? how do we improve?
How to manage the expectations of participants towards the facilitator?
Training Details
Date: 9th April, Sunday 2023
Time: 2pm-5pm
Location: Online via Voov
Cost: 500rmb, no refund (Subsidies are available for individuals who are unable to pay but have demonstrated commitment and contribution to community mental health.)
Registration: please contact Summer.
Training Format: The training will be a combination of lecture, demonstration, group discussion, role-playing, and hands-on activities. Participants will have the opportunity to practice their facilitation skills and receive feedback from the trainer and other participants.
About the Trainer
Xiaojie Qin
A psychotherapist, the director of CandleX, with 5 years of experiencing facilitating the Peer Support Group, and 8 years of experience managing the group up to now.
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