Support to Practice Training

New Fall Cohorts Open for Registration

In the spring, The Federation launched the latest iteration of our regional training opportunities for members, allies, and partners across the sector—Support to Practice training for staff in supervisory roles.

While these regional training opportunities began in-person, across the province with a series of Cultural Safety Training Sessions led by Tammie Myles of Mother Earth Whispers, we have since had to transition this program online. However, both the Cultural Safety training and the Support to Practice training were great successes.

And that’s why I am very pleased to announce that we will be offering three more cohorts of the Support to Practice training through the fall of 2021.

Supporting Practice, Improving Service Delivery

As you all know very well, working in the community social services sector requires you to make difficult judgement calls all the time—you have to deal with a lot of tough and complex situations. But for the most part, “clinical supervision” is focused on staff only in therapeutic roles.

This training, offered in partnership with Community Action Initiative and CityU, endeavours to support all of our valuable employees. It explores and shares what we are calling a “Support to Practice” framework custom-built for all staff in supervisory roles that translates to a wide range of service delivery areas.

The cohort-based series of workshops teaches supervisors and managers how to understand the spectrum of supervisory responsibilities and helps them develop specific supervisory skills that enhance direct services—ensuring your organizations are supporting your staff and meeting the unique needs and circumstances of your clients and communities.

Each cohort of participants will follow the same two-part training structure. (See workshop descriptions below.)

> One 6-hour virtual workshop on Principled Engagement with Indigenous People
> Four 3-hour virtual synchronous workshops on Support to Practice Supervision

Three cohorts will be running from September through January and registration for all three is open now. (Additional cohorts will be offered in 2022.) We encourage only 1-2 participants from each organization to attend this training in order to allow a diverse range of perspectives and service areas in each cohort.

Supporting Members, Strengthening The Sector

These training topics (Cultural Safety, Staff Supervision) were selected based on feedback from Federation members, Leadership 2020 participants, our sector partners, and through the Social Services Labour Market Research Project.  They also support The Federation’s ongoing goal of building a stronger and more sustainable community social services sector.

As always, if you have ideas or feedback about ways we can support your organizations and employees please get in touch with me.

Rick FitzZaland
Federation Executive Director