PROSPECT offers workshops on a range of topics including:
Topics can be adapted to meet the specific needs of workshop participants.
CULTURE, RELIGION AND HEALTH CARE
A skills-based approach to care in a multiracial society.
Meeting cultural and religious needs is an essential part of providing care in a multi-ethnic society. This workshop enables participants to respond flexibly to the needs of people from a wide variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. The content can be adapted to cover issues and aspects of care relevant to different professionals, for example, midwives, doctors, nurses or staff working with older people in residential and community care settings.
What to expect
This workshop offers a safe learning environment in which everyone's perspective is welcomed and respected. It aims to enhance participants' abilities to provide individualised, care which takes cultural and religious needs into account. It increases understanding and confidence and is down to earth, practical and constructive.
The precise content is tailored to participants' needs. Topics most likely to be covered in a one-day workshop include:
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What is culture and who has it?
- Concepts of 'difference' and how these affect relationships and attitudes
- Ways in which culture and religion might influence needs
- Opportunities to reflect on current practice and to consider the client's perspective
- Identifying and meeting individual needs
- Discrimination and implications for health care provision.
- Using and recording names accurately
- Differences in family structure and implications for care
There is time for reflection and in particular for participants to identify specific ways in which they can improve their care for people with differing religious and cultural needs.
Each participant receives a folder of handouts summarising the course content.
LEADING ANTENATAL CLASSES
A two-day workshop designed for both new and experienced parent educators covering a broad range of topics listed below. However, if time and resources are in short supply, it can be adapted and run as a one day workshop.
The PROSPECT approach to parent education is based on the belief that antenatal classes should provide a safe, supportive environment in which women and men can set their own agendas and actively participate in their own learning.
Participants are encouraged to express their needs and to focus on topics of their choice. There are no lectures - instead there is a series of activities and discussions in groups of varying sizes, interspersed with time for reflection and evaluation. Additional information and approaches are added where appropriate and each participant receives a folder of hand-outs based on the workshop content. The topics likely to be covered include:
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The aims and scope of birth education.
- What parents want and need to know
- How adults learn
- The content and style of antenatal classes
- Initiating and maintaining a learning group
- How to encourage discussion and participation
- Using language and communicating effectively
- Handling sensitive and difficult topics
- Visual aids
- Teaching practical skills: relaxation, breathing awareness, massage
- Teaching mothers and couples
- Meeting the needs of fathers and other labour companions
- Making the baby real, encouraging positive attitudes to parenting
- Preparing for life after birth
- Reaching people who do not come to classes
- Evaluating the effectiveness of classes
There is also time for participants to plan how they will apply new ideas and skills.
Each participant receives a folder of handouts summarising the course content.
PROSPECT also provides consultancy and facilitation for staff who want to re-design parent education programmes in their area.
PREGNANCY LOSS AND THE DEATH OF A BABY
This workshop is based on the content of the Sands Guidelines for professionals,
Pregnancy Loss and the Death of a Baby (2007).
Rooted in research findings and the experiences of bereaved parents, it provides a supportive and confidential learning environment in which participants can increase their awareness and understanding of the needs and feelings of parents who have a childbearing loss and improve their confidence and ability to offer appropriate and flexible care.
Topics include:
- The range of childbearing losses and the needs of bereaved parents
- Grief and mourning
- The influence of culture and religion on the expression of grief
- Communicating with distressed parents
- Breaking bad news
- Giving information
- Offering support
- Enabling choice and informed consent
- Listening skills
- Staff support and boundaries
Each participant receives a folder of handouts summarizing the course content.
TEAMBUILDING
This workshop helps both new and established groups of managers and/or staff to improve the way they work together. The length and content are carefully designed to make sure that the participating team addresses its own needs.
Topics might include:
- what makes teams work well
- building and maintaining healthy teams
- gaining a deeper understanding of the satisfactions and pressures of each member's work
- managing change both as individuals and as a team
- enabling others to manage change effectively
- dealing with stress creatively
- improving communications skills both within the team and outwards
- supportive listening
- valuing and building on new ideas
- giving and receiving support
- identifying and using the skills of team members
