Training Classes

Start 2 Finish (S2F)

Crisis Intervention principles have long taught that mental health counseling and therapy do not belong in the context of field deployments and emergency crisis intervention. For the most part, most crisis intervention in the field is conducted by paraprofessionals, including both disaster emotional care and disaster spiritual care. These are the frontline care providers who also do the initial screening for serious mental health concerns along with screening for survival, safety, and social support needs. Many crisis responders receive hours of excellent training on psychological first aid principles and applications. However, they often are told that assessments and follow-up are necessary yet receive no specific training and equipping on those two topics. Screening, field assessments, and referrals are essential elements of crisis response and responders must learn how to do these effectively. After they provide crisis services, they also must follow - up to be certain that the impacted persons are stabilized and/ or improving.Again, very little is taught about how this follow - up is conducted. This course is designed to equip care providers with specific tools to use while doing the field assessments and then later doing the follow - up.Like flying a plane, both take-off and landing must be accomplished well.

Emotional Intelligence (EQSQ)

Front-line work involves having to make quick decisions that can often mean the difference between life and death for both their personnel and for the citizens that have called for help. The pressure of performing and making critical, life-altering decisions day in and day out under such difficult circumstances can be emotionally, spiritually, and physically exhausting. Understanding how emotions and spirituality plays a key role in their health and wellbeing is crucial on the long-term outcome of their resilience. This course will give participants the tools they need to become more emotionally and spiritually intelligent. They will learn how they can incorporate emotional and spiritual strategies and tactics into their homes, their relationships, and in their workplace. An individual with high emotional and spiritual intelligence can manage his or her own impulses, communicate with others effectively, manage change well, solve problems, have a more optimistic outlook, and can use humor to build rapport in crisis and in other tense situations. The outcome is better coping skills, closer relationships, and an increase in grit and resilience.

Functional Stress Hardiness (FSH)

In today’s world, most emergency services personnel have a very good understanding of functional fitness and the training that is required to physically do their jobs well. The physical strain is great, and these emergency services personnel have learned to train their muscles to do their everyday activities safely and efficiently. Stress Hardiness is about training the mind and spirit to deal with the typical stress reactions that come from an individual’s occupational and personal stress. This stress is unique to everyone – one size does not fit all. Know your stress weakness and train for stress hardiness! Learn to identify the causes of your individual stress reactions, what your typical stress reactions are, and most importantly, how to mitigate the impact of those stress reactions by training in advance of the critical moment to retain some stress hardiness during the crisis. Learn some exercises to develop stress hardiness just as one would learn physical exercises to develop physical fitness. Stress management after the fact is not enough – we must increase our stress hardiness so there’s less distress to manage!

Supporting Children after Disasters (SCD)

Children are exposed to many challenging situations. The frightful events of the last century are almost commonplace and new challenges threaten the daily lives of children. Most children in the twentieth century had never heard the word “terrorism.” Yet, the children of the twenty-first century know first-hand the meaning and implications of that word. Supporting children after disasters – natural, man-made, and hybrid – is a specialty for some disaster responders. It is collateral duty for other responders. Either way, we know that children are impacted by all these disasters, and we know that meeting children's needs are a little different than the needs of adults.

Trauma Informed Care (TIC)

In today’s world, even professions that at one time were not deeply impacted by trauma are now facing challenging situations involving trauma on a regular basis. These professions include teachers and school administration staff, pastors, church staff, and some non-profit staff to name a few. To be trauma-informed means that we as both a front-line worker, caregiver, teacher, or pastor assumes that an individual we come in contact with through our work is more likely than not to have a history of trauma. Trauma-Informed Care allows the individual providing care the awareness of an individual impacted by trauma. It also allows them to recognize the presence of trauma symptoms and acknowledges the role trauma may play in that individual’s life- whether that individual is someone they serve or a fellow co-worker. Trauma-Informed Care understands and considers the depth and pervasive nature of trauma and the impact it has on individuals. Trauma-Informed Care promotes spaces of healing and recovery rather than practices and services that may inadvertently re-traumatize.

Second Victim Syndrome (2V)

<i>Second victims are health care providers who are involved in an unanticipated adverse patient event, in a medical error and/or a patient related injury and become victimized in the sense that the provider is traumatized by the event. Frequently, these individuals feel personally responsible for the patient outcome. Many feel as though they have failed the patient, second guessing their clinical skills and knowledge base.</i> <br /><br /> <i>-Scott, et al. 2009</i> <br /> <br /> The age of pandemic has exacerbated the frequency and impact of Second Victim Syndrome (SVS) among the very people who have worked tirelessly and heroically to care for the millions who have been ill and even died because of this traumatic global threat. Ethical decisions, moral conflict, coupled with the resulting guilt, fear, and failure of personal performance has brought to light a condition that has plagued (no pun intended) healthcare providers for years. Second Victim Syndrome is not the same as PTSD and there is help for SVS.

Moral Injury (MI)

Healthcare professionals and emergency responders face extraordinary stressors in the crisis environment daily. Factor in staffing shortages, corporate financial constraints, long work hours, unrealistic rotations and shifts, dying clients and patients, and increasingly complicated situations, the constant technological challenges seem overwhelming at best. Now add in the personal stressors of family, finances, time away from home, the need for continuing education, fragile interpersonal relationships, and crisis becomes an ongoing event with little relief in sight. <br /><br /> During this age of uncertainty – especially during pandemic, all these stressors seem to have been exacerbated and recognizing stress and its manifestations seems irrelevant. Critical incidents, adverse events, medical and operational errors, near misses, disclosure, reporting, and moral injury and second victimization seem to be expected even when unwanted. It’s important to know that these do not exist in isolation – they are on a continuum of crisis. <br /><br /> Is there a balm in Gilead for responders – healthcare and emergency personnel? Talking about stress and manifestations of stress will be inadequate for resilience and fitness. Awareness, stabilization, mitigation, and restoration in new ways will be necessary.

Managing Relationships During Crisis (MPR)

Critical events, disasters, death, trauma – they shatter our lives and we feel the emotional impact in every part of our life. While we attempt to cope and adjust, we also feel the impact on our relationships. Whether the relationship was healthy or “in trouble” before the crisis, the relationship seems fragile now. Heightened arousal, physical and emotional fatigue, multi-dimensional grief, and other complicating factors make managing relationships during crisis seemingly impossible. Understanding stress reactions that result from trauma and critical events is a starting point to understanding why relationships suffer. Recognizing signs and symptoms of relationship crisis helps reduce the risk of damaged relationships. Awareness of how depression affects relationships also helps manage the relationship crisis. When relationships are damaged or even broken, there’s hope for healing, repair, or resolving the issues that cause the difficulty. Many seek personal restoration of relationships, and others will seek restoration of family and even professional relationships. Awareness, assessment, preparation, and implementation of relationship theory, principles, and practice will help manage relationships in crisis.

Building & Maintaining a CISM Team (BMT)

Critical Incident Stress Management teams are a vital part of any agency or organization. This team will respond to small or large incidents that can cause significant stress. However, building and maintaining a team can be a challenging task. In this class we will discuss the different steps in starting a team from the ground up and how to revitalize and maintain a current team. Where do you start? How do you proceed? Who are the decision makers? Where do we get funds for the team? Questions like these can be overwhelming and difficult to muddle through. In this one-day class we will address these and other questions to help solidify a team. Be prepared to come and work in open discussions; laptop and/or smartphone not required, but advisable.

Stress, Compassion & Fatigue (RES)

This course offers information and exploration of traumatic stress and how to build personal resilience and protect yourself and those around you from the most harmful effects. The course will also explore the phenomenon of compassion fatigue for caring professionals. The course will offer practical assistance for building and fostering resilience to keep first responders, chaplains, health care and mental health professionals and other caregivers healthy and functional while performing their jobs. The course will also offer insights for those in leadership to identify risk factors and warning signs of those suffering from high levels of critical incident stress or compassion fatigue. Participants will complete personal assessments and create a self-care plan to increase fitness on the job and at home to encourage a healthy work and life balance

Trauma's Impact on the Family (TIF)

The course will look at many different types of trauma and how exposure by one or more family members may impact every person as well how the family functions. Family members may be exposed to trauma through a critical incident such as an accident, disaster, violent attack, or sexual assault. For some, exposure to trauma comes as a part of their occupation in the military, law enforcement, fire service, medicine or mental health. In any situation, the family may be unaware of how trauma will impact the individual and most often they are not aware that the entire family will feel the effects. Understanding how traumatic stress impacts the mind and body as well as relationships and systems will equip families to cope. The class will also look are tools that can foster resilience and enhance recovery. It is not just possible for families to survive the impacts of traumatic stress, but to thrive and grow even stronger when they are educated and equipped to face it.

Operational Stress First Aid (OSFA)

Operational Stress First Aid (OSFA) is a unique program to teach psychological first aid to first responders and others who are susceptible to stress injury. The program was originally developed by Department t of Defense for the Marines is used to prevent, identify and treat stress problems caused by operations, critical events and personal or family crisis situations. The goal of OSFA is to build resiliency and awareness, and to keep personal fully functional. The program also includes tools to assist leaders and personnel to take appropriate actions to restore personnel to full function and readiness when necessary. The principles of this class are foundational to all psychological first aid and resources reference legitimate and credible crisis intervention organizations.

Youth Suicide: Awareness & Prevention (YSAP)

Suicide is a growing threat to our youth. It is the third leading cause of death for those ages 10-24 in the US. The suicide rate for youth has nearly tripled since the 1940's and continues to increase and impact younger and younger kids. Anyone who has a relationship with a young person or those who work with children and teens need to be trained to understand the threat of suicide and the best ways to protect those in their care. Our culture and the rapidly changing impact of social media are leveling new threats at young people daily.

Basic Peer Support (BPS)

Basic Peer Support and Education was established to ensure first responders involved in work related critical incidents are provided with intervention and available resources to mitigate the immediate effects of a traumatic incident. This class will provide an overview on the history of Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), Peer Support Program (PSP), and Psychological First Aid (PFA). We will discuss Employee Assistance Programs and other emotional assistance recourses.

Disaster Response Foundations (DTC101)

Disasters are complicated settings that require a lot of coordination and cooperation. Many agencies respond – some are specifically invited and some spontaneously arrive. Disaster responders are usually highly trained and skilled in disaster response and ministry. Much of that training is provided specifically for disaster response by the agencies who respond. However, there are many groups and agencies who respond out of care and compassion, and they have no specific training that has prepared them for this unique experience. Their intentions are good, but good intentions are not enough. Both responders and agencies need to understand the nature of disasters and how emergency operation centers function. Who is in charge? Who gives them authority? How does the command structure operate? Who gets in behind the yellow tape? And who is responsible for all the volunteers who show up on scene? This course will fill in the blanks – give the participant a broad understanding of disasters and crises – how they operate and how the participant may be involved. There are national expectations and national guidelines for training, vetting, and responding. Everyone who responds to the disaster scene should be trained to integrate smoothly into the system in play.

Ministry in the Age of Pandemic (MAP)

What do you know about pandemics? Your experience during these past few months has probably taught you a lot about pandemic. You know that it’s a real threat. You know that it spreads easily. You know that it disrupts life as you know it. And you know that we have many unanswered questions about “what’s next?” Chaplains, ministers, and peer support personnel have been essential partners in providing caring ministry during this pandemic. Although there was little awareness and almost no preparation, we have managed to save lives, limit some spread, and learn many new things about what we “should have known.” Today, caring interventions must include effective implementation of compassionate interventions that minister to the physical, emotional, and spiritual issues of people in need. We must consider anew, what are the threats? What are the needs? What are the spiritual issues? Care providers must begin the intentional preparation that puts them on the forefront of spiritual care ministry during the aftermath of pandemic. No one person or one agency will be able to meet the needs of the thousands—the millions—that may be emotionally and spiritually affected by pandemic.

Enhancing Resilience (ER)

The concept of resilience has become a popular topic of discussion, learning, and practice in recent years. The idea of “bouncing back” from traumatic events has become imperative for first responders and others who provide caring services and ministry during and after critical incidents. Included in the concept of resilience is the ability to adapt to adversity, to cope in the face of distress, to be flexible in unusual circumstances and even to see opportunity in challenges. Spiritual Resilience may be described as the ability to use values and beliefs, a sense of hope and purpose, to sustain oneself through the difficult challenges of life. It is the soul’s ability to feel shalom in spite of difficulty and distress, through times of want and need, maintaining the sacred spaces of wholeness and well-being. In this course, learn how spiritual resilience has transformational power – the ability to change you from being negative, hopeless, resentful, depressed, mistrustful, and feeling insignificant. Crisis responders who practice habits of the heart strengthen their spiritual resilience in the face of adversity.

Foundations for Chaplains (DTC102)

People from almost every walk of life enter into the field of spiritual care during crises and disasters. Many also serve in institutions and agencies such as corporations, hospitals, schools, police and fire departments, EMS and a myriad of other contexts. Since there is no universally accepted training program for “chaplains” and other spiritual care providers, many people who enter into chaplaincy never receive the foundational training that helps to equip them for the role of chaplain or spiritual care provider. Being a “nice person” helps. It isn't enough. Chaplains need to learn about the psychological stress that many people experience and must learn how to mitigate that stress. Helping people cope during the aftermath of bad news, civil unrest, homicides, terrorism, and other emergencies becomes one of the most import tasks for the chaplain. Facilitating adaptive functioning and access to more appropriate care are essential.

Peer to Peer Crisis Intervention (P2P)

Today, many emergency services organizations recognize the value of peer support teams and train from within their organizations to meet the critical event stress that their personnel experience. Peer support teams have almost instant rapport with their colleagues and tend to be trusted and make a positive difference in the recovery process after critical event stress. Peers have a unique advantage in making good connections with other peers in that they often have shared identity, vocation, experience, and mission. They have a unique understanding of their peers' frustrations, anger, stressors, concerns, and even reactions. They have a natural rapport that “outsiders” do not have. Shared identity is inadequate if appropriate training, supervision, and evaluation are omitted. Peers must become proficient in crisis intervention – specifically, being able to provide stress reducing interventions with impacted peers. Most interactions begin with one-on-one conversations between peers. The value of peer support is significant and peer support almost always begins with peer to peer conversations.

Crisis Care in Diversity (CDC)

Crisis intervention teams encounter people from diverse backgrounds, beliefs, values, and expectations. Understanding the worldview of those we serve is essential in providing helpful, appropriate care in the midst of crisis. Cultural sensitivity incorporates the benevolent, considerate connection with people that encourage the ability to learn about and get to know people who are different from you, thereby creating a feeling of wanting to respond and serve them better.

Psychological First Aid for First Responders (PFA)

Psychological First Aid (PFA) is an evidence-informed modular approach to help first responders in the immediate aftermath of disasters and other critical events. First responders to such events, may struggle with or face new challenges following the event. PFA is designed to reduce the initial distress caused by traumatic events and to foster short- and long-term coping skills and adaptive functioning. PFA is based on the understanding that first responders and others affected by such events will experience a broad range of early reactions (e.g., physical, cognitive, psychological, behavioral, spiritual). Some of these reactions will cause enough distress to interfere with adaptive coping, and recovery may be helped by support from compassionate and caring persons. PFA does not assume that all first responders and impacted persons will develop severe mental health problems or long-term difficulties in recovery.

Strategic Planning & Implementation (SPI)

Prerequisite: ICISF’s Group Crisis Intervention (class taken post 2007). Today, crisis responders know how important it is to have a clearly defined Mission and Purpose. They also know that having clear objectives is essential. So how do those objectives get articulated? One of the most strategic ways to articulate the plan – the organized objectives - is to create a strategy by answering the most necessary questions: Who are the impacted people/agency we will serve? What kind of crisis intervention will we provide? When is the best time to provide each of the interventions? Where is the safest and most reasonably convenient place to provide each intervention? Why are the people/agency impacted with distress? How will our team dispatch resources? By gender, age, vocation, language, skill, experience, availability, proximity, diversity issue, appropriateness of required and helpful assets.

Crisis Care during Traumatic Grief (CCTG)

Grief is a common and healthy response to the loss of a friend or loved one. Grief is also a common reaction to losses of many other kinds – jobs, marriages, homes, health, or reputation. Care providers encounter people who have experienced many losses both personally and professionally. Traumatic events complicate the grieving process. This course will present key concepts related to grief and loss, increasing awareness of how trauma impacts grieving and mourning -- emotionally, cognitively, socially, spiritually, and relationally. Learn a little about how trauma affects the brain, how the brain goes into over-drive, and what care providers can do to support in traumatic grief. This course is designed for anyone who works with people who experience grief and loss following a traumatic event. Learn about instrumental and intuitive grievers and why they struggle to comfort each other.

Line of Duty Death (LODD)

It’s hard for a department to think about the death or catastrophic injury happening to one of their members; however, not preparing for such an event can cause even more heartache and stress on everyone involved should a tragedy occur. The emergency services are good at preparing for disasters and emergencies of all kinds, and preparing for a line of duty death or injury should be no exception. Having a plan in place will help ensure that caring for the family, department members, putting together a funeral, and caring for long term needs will run a bit smoother.

Strong Foundations for First Responders (SFR)

PTSD and suicide in the first responder services have become a hot-button issue due to suicide rates being on the rise. While the need for peer support, CISM teams, and correctly trained clinicians is vital, it is also crucial to teach and encourage resiliency from day one of the academy. Combating the adverse side effects of a first responder career starts before an individual steps foot on an apparatus

Effective Communication (EC)

One of the most important skills we must have as humans who live in relationships with others is the ability to communicate effectively. Communication enables us to share information and understand what others are saying to us. Effective communication builds stronger relationships, prevents misunderstandings, manages interactions within groups, and even makes us more credible about the issues that are important to us. We have often heard people complain that the biggest problem in a relationship – individual or group – is “poor communication.” Sometimes, we’ve even heard that it was “no communication.” Shaw was probably correct in that most of us believe we have communicated well, even when the listener totally misunderstands what we have said. This training course will help you know what you must intentionally do to become a better, effective communicator. In crisis intervention, active listening is essential. However, appropriate responding is also absolutely necessary in the communication process. It requires both listening and responding in such a way that the impacted speaker feels heard and understood.

CISM Practicum (CP)

Many people complete the foundational ICISF courses – “Assisting Individuals in Crisis” and “Group Crisis Intervention” either in the two-day each or three-day combined “Assisting Individuals in Crisis and Group Crisis Intervention” (GRIN) course presentations. All persons who provide crisis intervention under the umbrella of ICISF CISM must have completed these foundational courses and benefit from extended praxis, evaluation, and reflection. One of the greatest challenges for most of these trained persons is the lack of supervised practice of the skills and techniques learned in the foundational courses. Completing the “Advanced Assisting Individuals in Crisis” and the “Advanced Group Crisis Intervention” courses could also be helpful. However, without regular practice and field experience, most trained team members do not integrate the principles and apply them effectively. This course is designed to allow the praxis, evaluation, and reflection that is necessary for constant learning and improvement of skills. Participants will actively practice Crisis Management Briefings (CMB), Defusings, and Critical Incident Stress Debriefings (CISD) under supervision of peers and the instructor using various scenarios of critical events.