Tees Valley & Durham Area
Cruse Bereavement Care
Support and Resource Centre

Training Courses

Below is an outline of the training courses offered by Cruse. The training courses are run over various time scales and are available to everybody. Some of our courses are funded and can be offered at a reduced rate; otherwise assisted places can be arranged in agreement with Cruse.

Awareness in Bereavement Care (Foundation Course)

The aim of this course is to provide the skills, knowledge and awareness for a person to be able to begin working with a bereaved client. All volunteers must attend this course before getting involved in Cruse activities.

This Foundation Course will contain a further 2 modules of 6 hours each on "A Child's Grief" "Sudden and Traumatic Death" and using e-mail support which will be dealt with in ongoing training.

By the end of the course, trainees will:

• Have knowledge of the theories and models of grief and understanding of their application in a counselling context.
• Have practised a range of counselling skills.
• Have developed a greater self-awareness and an understanding of themselves in a counsellor role.
• Have developed understanding of the use of boundaries and contracts.
• Recognise the value of supervision and understand how to make use of it.
• Have experienced a variety of bereavement situations through case study and role-play and gained knowledge of the factors affecting grief.
• Understand responding to bereaved people and how bereavement can lead to new growth and development for the client.
• Gained knowledge and understanding of the relationship between counsellor and client.

Listening Skills Training Course

Listening is an essential tool for developing relationships and interacting with clients. The aim of this course is to identify, develop and adapt the life-skill of listening and attending. In addition, it reflects on personal and interpersonal consequences of using listening skills.

The course will include modules on:

• Creating safety-negotiating boundaries
• What is listening?
• Attending
• Non verbal communication
• Empathetic understanding: definition and level
• A guided journey
• Endings

Aspects of Bereavement

The aim of this course is to provide an insight and understanding of the nature of death and bereavement. It is available to anyone who needs or wishes to develop a better understanding of death and bereavement and their ability to communicate more effectively with people who are dying or bereaved.

The course will include modules on:

• Personal loss
• Normal grieving
• Complicated grieving
• Anticipatory grief
• Multiple loss
• Children and death
• Traumatic death
• Taking Care of You
• Summary & Conclusions

Opportunity will be given for discussion and group work.

If you are interested in any of the above training courses, please contact the Tees Valley Cruse office on 01325 288633 and we will be pleased to advise you in more detail.