Spiritual and Religious Care Visitor Training Classroom Course

Multiple dates September 9 to October 21, 2009

We offer ‘Spiritual and Religious Care Visitor Training’ for clergy/faith-group leaders and lay ministers from various religions/faith-groups to enhance their skills in visiting patients/clients in hospitals and other institutions.

The 7 week – 20 hours training will be held on Wednesday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00 pm, starting September 9 to October 21, 2009 and on Saturday, October 17 from 9:00 am to 1:30 pm.

Candidates are offered and required to do 10 hours of direct client care as part of the course. (For details please contact us.)

The course will address topics such as …

• theological foundations for spiritual and religious care in major world religions
• overview of mental illness and addiction
• suicide
• listening skills
• working with elderly
• boundaries and ethics etc.

Registration Fee: $ 110.00

Last Date to Apply: August 28, 2009

Certificate of completion will be issued to the successful candidates at the end of the course.

Download the PDF with application form. 

More on the Spiritual and Religious Care Visitor’s Training Programme

This course is designed for those who would like to be Pastoral Visitors in hospitals and other institutions such as nursing homes, long-term care facilities, prisons, etc.

Using the adult learning model, the learning will take place in group discussions, sharing, question & answer, dialogue, individual participation, lecture, role-plays, use of audio/video equipment, etc. There will be handouts given on various topics.

A Brief Description of the Course

• Week 1: The Spiritual and Religious Care Visitor as a Person: Why are we here?
  In the first session all the participants are introduced to each other and try to get to know each other by sharing why we do what we do and why are we here. Also, we will look at the theological foundations in the major World Religions for spiritual and religious care and find facts about various religions.
• Week 2: Who Receives Spiritual and Religious Care? —Part 1
  We will have an overview of mental illness and addiction. We will look at some statistics pertaining to the topic. There will also be an experiential learning of mental illness in small group role-play. In learning the listening skills, we start with how is it to have to be quiet and ‘being in silence’ with each other.
• Week 3: Who Receives Spiritual and Religious Care? —Part 2
  There will be a presentation on Moods Disorder—Depression, Bi-Polar Disorder etc by an expert followed by a question and answer period.
• Week 4: Suicide
  There will be discussion and information about suicide—Beliefs around suicide, the stigma attached to it, what to look for in a suicidal person and what to do with the information etc.
• Week 5: Working with Elderly
  There will be an expert’s presentation. Question & Answer period will follow. Issues about reporting elder abuse and the tell-tale signs of elder abuse will be discussed. The listening skills will be focused on working with elderly.
• Week 6: Addiction and Treatment
  Overview of Addictions and different models of treatment available will be presented and discussed by an expert in the field.
• Week 6 (Saturday): Context of Spiritual and Religious Care
  The focus will be CAMH as the context of spiritual and religious care. Diversity and Spiritual and Religious Care and the logistics of being here are some of the topics that will be addressed.
  Listening Skills—use of Role Play
  Special emphasis will be given to developing listening skills, which will be part of the programme on the first six weeks, value of silence, personal presence and what is empathy and compassion.
• Week 7: Celebration and Giving out Certificates.

Boundaries, Ethics and Self-care will be addressed in each session.

Each session will end with a Multifaith prayer

For more information, please contact 

Spiritual and Religious Care Services
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
1001 Queen Street W, Toronto, ON M6J 1H4
416-535-8501 Ext. 2189/2188
Fax: 416-583-4612
biruta_pearcy@camh.net or pearly_daniel@camh.net

 

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