Courses and Programmes
Start learning today, investing in yourself and helping others.
Heartspace Programme
Working from within the context of the local church or alternate community setting, the Mental Health Support Worker is a responder to crisis or escalating distress, someone who uses empathy and wisdom to help regulate distressed emotions, someone who builds trust to help manage an ongoing recovery journey, and someone who assists to establish links for collaborative therapeutic relationships with other services.
The Mental Health Support Worker is trained to understand how psychological and spiritual concepts can be put into practice through the lens of God’s love and compassion for those experiencing emotional suffering and personal tragedy.
The Mental Health Support Worker role combines pastoral care and support worker skills. It includes the ability to undertake a basic (first step) mental health assessment, and knowledge of how to navigate and liaise with
professional services, but does not necessarily require advanced counselling skills. Important to the role is the Support Worker’s own life experience and wisdom, spiritual maturity, commitment and values, together with capacity for team work, listening, empathising, evaluating and ‘truth-finding’ in their own personal lives.
Training is provided by a team of professionals who have long experience in the field of mental health. Some of the organisations involved are Workplace Support, Mental Health Education & Resource Centre (MHERC), Laidlaw College, and Stepping Stone Trust. Trainers come from backgrounds of counselling, education and teaching, psychology and medicine, including some who know from personal experiences the reality of dealing every day with mental health issues.
The training environment is built around educational seminars, mentoring, and peer group relationships. Trainees work alongside experienced mental health workers throughout their training and a medical clinical director oversees the programme as a whole. Trainees are expected to be part of the team structure of an existing community organisation or home church, and commit themselves to a self-directed discipline of reading, reflection, and personal development. Deacon Trust seeks a strong collaborative relationship between the trainee, their local church, and Deacon Trust, so part of the process is to ensure that this is established early in the training cycle.
The course is in two parts. Part 1 can be completed over two weekends or 2 hour evening sessions over 10 weeks. This will give you a solid introduction to providing mental health support in a church or community setting. Part 2 is 3 months in length with the potential for further training in subsequent years. The course structure is sufficiently flexible to accommodate candidates’ ongoing workplace and family commitments but does require the completion of foundational education modules.
Heartspace Part 1
Up to three months comprised of teaching, personal study, reflection, and quiet time.
Heartpsace Part 2
Three-month programme completes the training to become a Mental Health Support Worker, and is a continuation of Part 1.
The three threads to becoming a Mental Health Support Worker
A Mental Health Support Worker is someone who:
Acts as an empathic listening ear in crisis or distress; who helps regulate and assess presenting concerns; who helps establish trust in the future therapeutic journey.
Acts as navigator to appropriate services, programs and literature.
Has the required pastoral skills to ‘hold’ a person while (s)he waits on appropriate professional services.
Takes emergency action based on determined criteria.
Understands the key tenets of spiritual and psychological care.
An example of an existing similar model is that provided by Workplace Support which has been in operation in New Zealand for half a century. It supplies support workers who provide pastoral care and advice to businesses in the workplace. Workplace Support has over 200 clients who pay for on-site support and counselling services. The majority of support workers are not trained counsellors but have the skills and experience to assist with mental health issues. The inclusion of Workplace Support in the current initiative has provided it with expertise, experience and resources in its early stages.
Become A Mental Health Support Worker
Please note that there are no pre-requisites for enrolling on our courses.
However, we do ask that you are committed to the weekly training evenings or two weekends depending on delivery option required, and to any homework or fieldwork that is set.
We also ask that you have a positive relationship with your pastor, your church or your workplace with whom you can share your journey, and make plans for working alongside them for the future.
Please fill the attached enrolment form and return to our Manager. We will contact you shortly and discuss any further questions that you need answering.
