The human services workforce is encountering many challenges related to recruitment, retention, and staff morale. A major factor contributing to these challenges is compassion fatigue – an unintended consequence of working in helping professions. External life factors can easily exacerbate commitment to day-to-day responsibilities, resulting in missed opportunities for support, and a lack of empathy for others.
Daily stressors can also impact on individual mental and physical health overall. When these variables are coupled with challenging or high-stress work environments, it can be easy for anyone to become increasingly overwhelmed. This may be seen in work performance, decision-making, and with peer-to-peer relationships.
Effective leadership practices, supervision skills, and support strategies can help prevent burnout and reduce staff turnover. Using CWLA’s 4 A’s framework, this training will focus on:
- Increase Awareness of the many challenges and contributing factors that can create/ exacerbate compassion fatigue in the workplace
- Acknowledge the complexity of these issues and the role supervisors can play in supporting self-evaluation and professional growth
- Identify Actions supervisors and individual staff can take to create a positive work environment and promote psychological safety
- Discuss shared Accountability to empower and support staff with a proactive approach to reducing compassion fatigue and identifying measurable progress
Trainer: Marcus Stallworth, LMSW, CWLA Director, Training and Implementation.