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Training and Consultancy

Training and Consultancy Services

Leeds Survivor-Led Crisis Service has been nationally recognised as an example of excellence in acute mental health crisis care.  Our service is fundamentally radical in its approach, being staffed entirely by survivors and offering a non-medicalised, innovative approach to helping people in crisis.  We have hosted visits from organisations up and down the UK and from as far away as Australia wanting to learn from our unique service.  As such, we are proud to offer a range of bespoke training and consultancy services on a range of issues for statutory, voluntary and private organisations across Leeds and Yorkshire and beyond.

With nearly twenty years frontline experience of supporting people in crisis, LSLCS can offer informative, useful training on subjects that it’s becoming increasingly crucial for workers and managers to understand well.

Senior managers/managers at LSLCS can provide flexible training packages on the following areas. It’s possible to run full or half-day courses, with greater or lesser emphasis on each area as required.

Working with Complex Trauma:

Many people in the mental health system are survivors of adverse life events such as physical, emotional and sexual abuse in childhood. The links between these events and the development of mental health issues in adulthood are now well-recognised. Current and recent literature exhort services to become ‘trauma-informed’ in terms of developing greater understanding of both the effects of trauma and of the most effective ways of working with survivors. As survivors have been traumatised within the context of relationships, they can easily be re-traumatised by workers who lack skilled awareness of the relational nature of this work. This training covers:

  • Brief history of trauma studies
  • The effects of trauma
  • Complex trauma and its links with Borderline Personality Disorder
  • The relational nature of working with survivors of complex trauma
  • How to build short-term/long-term therapeutic relationships
  • How to de-escalate suicidal feelings/urges to self-harm
  • Overview of current literature/resources
Working with Dissociation:

Many survivors of severe trauma have learnt to use dissociation as a tool to cope with unbearable experiences. However, it can easily be mischaracterised or not recognised at all by workers, and this can lead to increased distress and escalation of risk. This training covers:

  • What dissociation is – mild to severe
  • Its links to complex trauma
  • How to recognise dissociation
  • How to ‘ground’ a dissociative person and reduce risk
  • How to work with ‘alters’ in a severely dissociative person
  • Controversies around Dissociative Identity Disorder and why the issues are genuine
Vicarious Trauma:

Working with survivors of trauma and people with severe mental health issues can have a range of adverse effects on workers. Vicarious traumatisation is the process by which workers are transformed in negative ways by recurrent empathic engagement in the course of frontline work. However, by recognising this issue, it’s possible to safeguard against it. This training covers:

  • What Vicarious trauma is
  • Its links to worker ‘burnout’/compassion fatigue
  • How to recognise it
  • Biological, psychological and social effects of Vicarious Trauma
  • How organisations and individuals can minimise its effects

Examples of previous courses provided include Working with self-harm and suicidal ideation, and Basic person-centred counselling skills.

For further information please email Simon Richardson (Operations Director)