Event - Training to support people’s mental health in Sri Lanka
Careif was offered an exciting opportunity to work in partnership with a local team to help fill a particular gap in the mental health support offered to people in Sri Lanka. We readily agreed and offered to assist in the planning and running of two training events for members of the Church of Ceylon which took place in February 2024.
We had been approached by the Bishop of Colombo, the Right Reverend Dushantha Rodrigo, a senior member of the Church of Ceylon to undertake this training. Sri Lanka has experienced an exodus of qualified mental health practitioners. Consequently, parish priests were often finding themselves in the front line as their parishioners or community members come to them for assistance.
Working with local clergy and practitioners over the past year Careif has helped to plan the training and design a curriculum. The aims were to improve the knowledge and understanding of parish priests regarding mental health and ill-health and to promote and enhance local support systems.
In February 2024 we facilitated two residential training events, a five-day event conducted in English and a separate three-day event in the local languages of Tamil and Sinhala. The events took place in Colombo and used a hybrid model, with some trainers being present and some on-line. The training was based on an adult learning and interactive model, with lots of learning exercises as well as some talks.
Topics covered included when to refer on, working with grief and bereavement, working towards a resilient community, Equality Diversity and Inclusion, who am I?, what shapes our identity, cultural fluency, self-development, mental health and psychosocial skills. In addition, Careif’s Trustees and Patrons contributed to many sessions and covered topics including:
the range of mental health conditions seen in the community
health Inequalities
addressing diverse populations
leadership
being an effective helper
developing support systems
self-care.
Each participant developed an individual plan on how they will put their learning into their parish work, and the workshop groups mapped out available agencies across the country to assist in the development of their personal support systems.
We are now starting to assist in running monthly follow-up webinars that will cover topics determined by the participants.
An evaluation form was completed anonymously after each day’s training by each participant, and this was then reviewed by the locally based team so the training could be tweaked or refocused accordingly. In addition, each participant completed a self-evaluation sheet on a daily basis.
The sessions were enthusiastically received and feedback included;
“I feel a little more confident but also acutely aware of what I don’t know.”
“Opening up can be a very scary, traumatic experience, it can be painful for not only the person opening up but the person listening as well. So, the need for self-care needs to be stressed.”
“Their style of leadership [the Careif team] is a very revolutionary one. They lead by sheer modelling. They communicate clearly and honestly but balance gentleness and firmness.”
“I am just starting to involve those kind of psychosocial training activities. So, I can improve my strength in this field to help my society and Church”.
Careif would be happy to offer this, or similar training, in partnership with local groups to other faith or community groups in the UK or elsewhere in the world. Please get in touch if you would like to find out more.
