Navigating Vulnerability - workshop for frontline practitioners

Navigating Vulnerability is a collection of interviews with people in a range of roles whose work, in one way or another, involves holding the emotional load of others. We spoke to professionals within domestic abuse specialist support, the wider voluntary sector, the culture sector, as well as those working in schools and university settings.

Illustrator Lou Brown has created a series of images that visually represent the key themes that emerged from these rich and varied conversations.

This workshop will be a pilot training session for frontline practitioners.

Through engaging in the imagery and interview extracts, we will:

• Identify the contexts, tasks and roles that involve emotional load for the practitioner and what that can look like
• Acknowledge the implications - both practical and personal - of this kind of work, particularly where you as a practitioner hold your own challenging lived experience
• Embrace the value of such lived experience
• Explore how different practitioners determine where to set boundaries to protect themselves and their wellbeing in undertaking this kind of work
• Consider which of our interviewees coping strategies, processing frameworks and support structures you could incorporate into your approach

We are keen to understand the value that practitioners from different sectors take from this workshop and what else we could develop to support those who are navigating vulnerability in their work.

This work has been developed with support from Durham University.

Any financial contribution you are able to make towards this workshop will add to our capacity to keep on delivering this programme of work. Your donation would be hugely appreciated.