What will the course cover?
This has been devised as an advanced development course, suitable for people who have been in the job for more then 6 months and, therefore, it is not a course on how to be a community health worker. The films will show some practice that is less than ideal. We are sure you will be able to spot where the Community Health Worker might have acted differently, but that is not the aim of the course. Instead we hope viewing the films and discussing them will give you a rare opportunity to reflect on your own work and especially to recognise and think more about the complex and difficult parts of the job – what they are, what makes them hard and how you can be supported.
This course is an opportunity for you to:
1. Use the material in the course to reflect on your own everyday work
2. Think about some of your experiences in new ways
3. Listen to and learn from others
4. Understand the influences of wider society on clients’ choices
5. Think about what risk means to you and how it might be interpreted differently in different contexts
6. Recognise why your work can be very challenging
7. Identify sources of support to deal with difficult situations at work
This course is not:
1. To teach you how to be a good Community Health Worker
2. About identifying good or poor practice in others (we assume you know this already!)
Do I have to take part?
Participation in the pilot is voluntary, so please let your line manager know if you do not want to take part. You do not have to give a reason and it will not affect your employment here in any way.
Is the pilot being evaluated?
This course forms part of a pilot (testing) of a new training tool that our organisation has been involved in developing and evaluating in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Birmingham. The focus of the evaluation is on how well the session works (timings, resources, effectiveness of questions) and whether improvements can be made to the design of the training. Anonymous identifiers will be used in any reports (i.e. "Participant" or "Facilitator").
Members of the evaluation team may observe some of the sessions and you will be asked to complete a short anonymous questionnaire.
If you have any concerns about the evaluation, please don't hesitate to contact the team at the University of Birmingham (led by Dr Nicola Gale, n.gale@bham.ac.uk).