Copyright ©2022 Peter Slattery
Training for workers - eWorkshops and face to face
Explore training by topic
Engaging young people
Engaging young people means doing something meaningful, interesting, relevant and often, fast.
Young people and risk-taking
Young people don’t always sit still for a conversation. This workshop will look at just how to have the briefest of conversations, while at the same time tackling some of the tricky stuff.
Engaging disengaged young people
Working with disengaged young people means catching their attention fast, it means approaching young people in unexpected ways.
Group work and young people
Bang, crash boom! Young people in groups? Challenging, energetic and fun!
Groupwork activities, activities and more activities
Sometimes you just need a bunch of things at your fingertips that, in the middle of a group, you can pull out and use.
Managing ‘meltdowns’
Managing ‘meltdowns’, is as much about calmness and confidence as it is about strategies and skills.
Drug use – change and choice
This workshop is not about drugs – it’s about understanding both a young person’s inner and outer worlds.
Resilience, wellbeing and being well
How do we meaningfully hang onto the essence of these vitally important ideas, breathe meaning into the words and translate these ideas meaningfully into all that we do in our work?
Talking to teens – therapy on-the-go
Young people don’t always sit still for a conversation. This workshop will look at just how to have the briefest of conversations, while at the same time tackling some of the tricky stuff.
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Talk to me about your needs and together we can design something specifically for the work you do, the young people you work with and the circumstances you find yourself in.
Topics in detail
Drug use –change and choice
The workshop is for anyone working with young people where substance use is a concern. This workshop is not about drugs – it’s about understanding both a young person’s inner and outer worlds, and what drives drug use in terms of who a person is and the world they personally live in. With this as background, the workshop is about firstly understanding drug use in terms of our society generally; secondly what it might mean to each individual person; and thirdly what we can offer that might help young people lead healthy and meaningful lives. This experiential workshop takes you through the actual framework you can use in understanding a young person’s drug use. You will have a chance to experience the strategies that you can use with individuals and groups. Learn about the motivational interviewing stages of change and how it can be made youth-friendly. There will also be a chance to work with others in the group to experience the joy and difficulty of promoting change in any person!
Engaging disengaged young people
What sort of school, community, society, and world do we want to live in? And how do we create it? What do we do with those things which we think are wrong with our school or community or world? How do we encounter the views of others in a respectful way and how do we work out whether we really disagree with another person’s view or values, or if they are simply different from our own? And what do we do next?Working with disengaged young people means catching their attention fast, and doing ‘something’ so they will connect with what is happening and how it is happening, and with you. It means approaching young people in unexpected ways; grabbing their attention and firing their imaginations. And it means doing all this from a solid evidence base of wellbeing and resilience and with an awareness of what is more likely to work with young people who are having a hard time of life. So we will look at multiple ways of doing this; from conversational story-telling to challengingly-supportive questions, to the two minute conversation, the four line drawing, and the idea of physical conversations. And we will look at how the evidence, the approach and strategies can be built into programmes, projects and individual interactions. This workshop is intended for you if you find yourself in a youth centre, class room, rehab centre, youth refuge, school or just sitting in a car driving somewhere with a young person (because that’s part of your job too).
Engaging young people
Engaging young people means doing something meaningful, interesting, relevant and often, fast. Because, many times, we don’t have time. So this workshop will look at how to do just that, using conversation, the totally open and intriguing art of asking attention-grabbing questions; the use of video and image, physical movement and simple yet meaningful, playfulness. All based on common sense, good research and experience. We will also look at the idea of ongoing engagement, the minefield that can disrupt this process, and what might help; as well as ways of both maintaining engagement.
Groupwork activities, activities and more activities
This practical and experiential workshop is for anyone running groups for people of any age and for any purpose, and who want to use dramatic, impactful and meaningful groupwork strategies. Participants will be able to join in over a dozen activities that will use physical movement, imagery and drawing, variations on scaling activities, interactive storytelling and the world’s simplest theatre activities. It will also explore using the internet, music and video as groupwork resources. This workshop will move beyond the idea of ice-breakers and focus on selecting activities for a specific purpose and for a particular group, time and place. Participants will have the chance to devise and present their own unique activities in the workshop. And we shall explore just why some activities fail and why others are total winners.
Group work and young people
Young people really are super-physical, super-influenced by their emotions, and respond super-impulsively to what’s going on around them. So with all this in mind this workshop will take you through a process that looks at how to harness all this for the good of a group. We will look at the skills, ways of thinking and practical strategies needed to run/facilitate groups with young people who at times can be challenging and difficult. We will look at the pivotal idea of Engagement and how to maintain that engagement over time. This is what we will cover:
- Experience 15 + activities
- Use of music and video, physical movement, scaling activities, super simple theatre activities, drawing, conversation and silence as part of groupwork
- How to plan a group ‘on the run’ with very little time
- How to work with young people who may seemingly, be grumpy, scared, angry, bored, don’t want to talk and/or just don’t want to be there
- How to create strategies for the verbal and the not-so verbal, including drawing, theatre-based action-based, physical movement oh and yes…thinking and talking…
- Embedding ‘learning’ within activities
- Blending process and content
- Managing the ‘difficult’ stuff
- Rules without rules
- Being surprising and unexpected
- Groups not as rehearsal for change/growth, but as a real experience of change/growth/development.
Managing 'meltdowns'
Managing ‘meltdowns’, is as much about calmness and confidence as it is about strategies and skills. Both of these certainly develop through experience, but they also develop from having clear plans and strategies to put into place before, during and after outbursts; and also being clear about our own strengths and capabilities that we can put into practice; also before, during and after outbursts. So this workshop includes:
- The voices of youth workers who have experienced such events. Tips, comments, suggestions, warnings, encouragements
- What to do before, during and after outbursts
- A check list of the Do’s and Don’t’s to manage such moments
- Understanding Trauma-informed-care; and the role of wellbeing and resilience…
- Developing strategies with young people to reduce the likelihood of further outbursts
- Applying Restorative Justice Principles.
Resilience, wellbeing and being well
This workshop is activity-based and experiential. This is what we will cover: what do the ideas resilience, wellbeing and being well mean? How do they translate into the lives of those we seek to assist, and how can the same ideas be constantly present and alive in our work? Young people and older people – the same or different? Well the answer is that they share many things as well as being quite different. So what does this mean for how we harness these ideas for people of different ages? What is the impact of trauma on people and what does it tend to produce in response from them? Understanding this helps make sense of the disruption of wellbeing, and guides us to how we might respond. And finally and importantly, what is the place of fun, laughter, lightness and wonder in the development of us all, and how can we promote this?
Talking to teens – therapy on-the-go
Why are questions so useful? Because a question gives you your own answers. And if the question is new, never heard before, then a person may well come up with an answer, yet still totally their own, that they have never heard before. This is affirming and worthwhile for anyone, yet for a young person experiencing life hardships, then such an experience can be life-transforming and hope-inspiring. And this is true even if the young person is not speaking at all, as some young people choose to do at times.
In this workshop we will look at therapeutic questioning using words that all people use, not just questions couched in the language of therapy. And because there are times when a young person may not want to speak to you, or to anyone, we will look at how to have the very briefest of conversations within which you can aim to do a great deal; how to offer something intriguing to a young person whether they speak or not; how to have a full conversation with someone without them speaking at all or you knowing any of the answers to the questions you ask, and how to have conversations that involve jots on paper, a stick in the sand, or even a walk down a street. And balanced with this we will look at the value and the role of respectful silence and attentive listening.
You will have the joy of both asking and responding to questions devised in the workshop, and you will find out how to have a terrific conversation in two minutes, including in situations which are less than ideal. All are based on solid therapeutic principles and practice.
The theatre of change. The art of ‘looking at ourselves’
Theatre always sounds, well, kind of theatrical really. Conjures up some unusual images. But the techniques actors use to develop themselves and how they use ‘theatrical techniques’ to prepare for ‘a show’ give us non-actors rich territory to explore. There are strategies to build rapport and trust between actors so they can confidently rely on each other on stage. There are techniques that help them connect with an audience, get their attention, tell a story, invite involvement. Gee! Sounds like working with young people to me…and their families…and their communities. So that’s what this workshop is about. How to make use of the thinking, the intentions and the strategies that theatre has to offer us, and adapt and mould all of this, while maintaining its integrity, to the work that we do. A very interactive, at times really challenging (in the best possible way) workshop.
Working with families – the good stuff and the tough stuff
What promotes respect and cooperation in families? And what tends to encourage the not-so-fabulous stuff; anger and aggression, meanness and disrespect? What are the ingredients we all need for wellbeing and what are the conditions we need to avoid? What can families do where the tough stuff seems to be winning? Can it be turned around so that family members are more likely to be happy, content, fulfilled, and appreciative, loving and respectful of each other? What can anyone do when life just seems overwhelmingly difficult? And what can we do, as workers, to help in this process? Research and common sense point to some of the ingredients which promote each of these sorts of lives and doing so can guide us as workers with families to help them get back on track. Research and common sense can also guide us as to what preventive measures we might take as well as looking at what ingredients need to be present in our own work with families and communities. So this workshop will look at both background principles as well as practical strategies for being useful to families, and particularly those ones having an especially tough time.
To tackle difficult stuff with a family we need solid relationships with each family member and the family as a whole. Relationships characterized by equal amounts of support and challenge, the serious and the playful, the best in people and where and how they want to be better. And we need conversations and processes with families that look not only at slip-ups and struggles, but that seek the best in people, find it, help it come out and then grow and flourish. So this workshop will focus on practical and straightforward ways of building compassionate, respectful and productive relationships with those we seek to serve; within which we can tackle the tough stuff, and strengthen the good stuff.
Young people and risk-taking
We know things about young people that we didn’t know even a little while ago. Peer group pressure is more internal than external, thrill-seeking is still thrill-seeking but more driven than previously thought and more important for young people than for children or adults. Young people really can think logically and systematically, although unfortunately not always at those moments when it is most needed.
Recently, two things have contributed to what we know about adolescents. Firstly, through more research we now better understand the nuances of what is happening for young people, and secondly, changes in society have contributed to a change in the nature of risk-taking.
So bearing this in mind we will take a look at the latest research about physiological and psychological development, with an eye on the only thing that really matters; how to help young people stay safe. We will look at big picture responses such as legislation, as well as explore what strategies, including communities and programs, can do to successfully keep young people safe.