Mental Health in Youth Work - Training Course

Youth Work Can Promote Mental Health

The Mental Health in Youth Work training explores the role and competencies of the youth workers in supporting the mental health needs of young people by strengthening their emotional and mental health skills.

Objectives

The training course objectives are: 

• Clarifying the understanding of what mental health means
• Understanding the role of youth workers in promoting mental health in their work with young people
• Developing youth workers’ practical skills in supporting people’s mental health in their work
• Encouraging participants to reflect on their everyday practices with young people   
• Enhancing the capacity to create a supportive, inclusive, and stigma-free environment

Mental Health from a preventive perspective

This training highlights mental health from a promotion and prevention perspective.

In this training, we do not approach mental health from the point of view of diagnosis, therapy, or healing – these approaches belong to the professional work outside youth work practices and require a set of competences that youth workers do not need to have.

Who can participate?

The training is open to you if you are

• working directly with young people on a regular basis in a youth work or youth-related services
• interested in developing your competencies in supporting young people’s mental health
• capable of applying the learning in your regular youth work practices
• willing to share experiences and good practices with others
• curious in mental health, emotional well-being, and resilience of young people

We want to especially encourage the participation of youth workers whose understanding of mental health is low or who have not been dealing with the topic before. 

This training is not open to

• mental health professionals, such as therapists, psychologists, and clinical health care personnel,
• teachers and other educators in the field of formal education, such as primary and secondary schools or faculties
• representatives of organisations who only organise international projects or who do not have regular local youth work activities 
• people looking for a therapeutic intervention. Given that we will be addressing potentially emotionally challenging topics related to mental health, we require participants to have emotional readiness to explore sensitive mental health issues.

Time and venue

The training will be hosted in Finland; the exact location will be announced later.

• Monday, October 19 - arrival
• Tuesday-Thursday October 20-22 - working days
• Friday, October 23 - departure

The programme includes a pre-task with the young people in your organisation and a pre-session online, where we discuss your pre-task. Instructions will be given to the selected participants.

This training is organised under Mental Health in Youth Work long-term project

Safe, accessible and sustainable

In this event, we follow the principles of a safer space. We strive to ensure that everyone is met as their own self and that no one has to fear discrimination or harassment. We want you to respect the same principle.

Our activities are accessible to people with different abilities. If you need a support person, accessible room and transport or other kind of support, we will provide it for you. You can tell your individual needs in beforehand so we can support you in your participation.

We take sustainability in consideration where we can. Since most participants have to fly over the sea to Finland, we encourage you to travel on land within Finland. We also encourage you to contact your own national agency to find out how they support low emission travelling to activities abroad.

We provide plant-based meals, or use locally grown and produced foods, as much as possible. We also respect the diets and food allergies of all participants.