Advancing Personal and Workplace Safety For Frontline Personnel
Trainers: John McKay & Judy McGuire
Frontline workers in community organizations face distinct challenges in maintaining physical safety for themselves, for their program participants, and for the public at large. Problems happen. People become angry. Individuals with drug and/or mental health issues present particular challenges. A wrong response can turn a problem into a crisis with little or no warning.
Frontline Community Safety Strategies teaches practical and proven methods to prevent and deal with public and workplace violence. We maximize security for employees, service users, worksites and organizations. Based on extensive frontline crisis intervention experience in community settings, this training goes beyond the general guidelines of conflict management to teaching tactics that work in high pressure, unpredictable situations.
Specific areas covered will include, but not be limited to:
Tactics for handling potential and actual workplace violence that keep employees, program participants, third parties and organizations legally and physically safe.
Prevention strategies for defusing hostile clients and gaining voluntary compliance.
Verbal techniques for reducing hostility.
How to recognize the cues to differentiate between anger and the potential for assault.
How to disengage from folks who won’t listen and how to leave a scene safely.
How to effectively let others know you need help.
How to decide when you should engage somebody and when you shouldn’t.
How to cope with the stress of critical incidents.
Each session is targeted to the specific needs and challenges faced by those taking the training. Course content is specifically geared to meeting challenges on the frontlines. Techniques are practical, easy to learn and immediately usable. Strategies are based on years of experience, and exemplify best practice in the field.
John McKay and Judy McGuire bring complementary perspectives to the training. John McKay is a retired Vancouver Police Inspector with a 35-year history in various aspects of community policing. He is a respected authority on use of force and personal protection training. Judy McGuire is a certified mediator who has worked in frontline community organizations for over 20 years. She has received extensive training in Conflict Resolution and Critical Incident Stress Management from the Justice Institute of British Columbia.
Courses:
Basic Risk Management: a practical overview that covers all of the basics
Critical Incident Management: How to keep yourself safe in a violent situation and how to cope with the after-effects.
Understanding Addiction: an overview of the physical, neurological, emotional and behavioural aspects of drug addiction.
Partial Funding for this website
is provided by the DTES C.A.P. Network through Industry
Canada's Community Access Program. Content is contributed by
community members and agencies. Tradeworks Training Society
administers the site through Pathways Information Centre. For more information about Pathways contact program manager Carol Madsen.
Some of the photos used are courtesy of Pivot Legal Society's Hope in the Shadows calendar. See the community news article for acknowledgement of the photographers
