Training – Telephone Defusing Workshop

The Telephone Defusing Workshop is one of Clarity’s most popular training courses. Defusing is a term used to describe the skills and knowledge that will help you be supportive with people you may speak with on the telephone who have been affected by some traumatic or possibly tragic event. It isn’t a version of counselling and doesn’t require that Defusers are trained health or social care professionals.

The skills and knowledge that constitute Defusing are very similar to Psychological First Aid (PFA). The main difference is that whilst PFA is intended for a civil emergency Defusing is more relevant to a commercial setting where the people affected are either customers or staff of the organisation that is responding to an incident.

 Who is this course helpful for?

The Telephone Defusing Workshop is most suitable for people likely to take calls or make calls to people affected by an incident that might be traumatic or even tragic.

Often they will be members of a team whose role will be to answer the telephones; possibly on a special helpline, following an incident. They may be people whose role ordinary requires them to be skilled on the telephone; such as in customer services.

Attending a Telephone Defusing Workshop is also likely to be helpful and informative for those managers who are likely to manage their organisation’s response to an incident, including the Telephone based response, even though they may not expect to have direct contact with people affected by an incident.

The content of the Workshop is always adjusted to make it as relevant as possible to the organisation commissioning the training.

How will participants benefit from taking part in the Workshop?

 They will feel more confident in their ability to cope with the incoming and outgoing calls that they may have to make with distressed colleagues, customers or others.

They will also be more helpful to those distressed people. Participants will learn:

• The reactions they might hear when providing support to people who are traumatised or bereaved]
• The importance of ‘Secondary Trauma’ and how it influences the outcomes (distress, reputation, cost) of an incident
• What to say and do and, very importantly, what not to say and do when providing direct support on behalf of their organisation
• What to be aware of and how they can look after themselves during the period of increased pressure that incident management often brings

 Length of course

 The Telephone Defusing Workshop is a one-day event. Start and finish times, as well as lunch and breaks are all flexible.

The Workshop is sometimes the main element of a larger training course; such as for a Relative Response Team. On those occasions the total course may be up to two days long.

A concise presentation based upon the Defusing Workshop has been delivered at events such as Conferences where time is short.

 How many people should attend?

 At Clarity we don’t impose a limit on numbers attending. However, when there are 15 or more participants we find there is less opportunity for everyone to interact during the day, which reduces the benefit of an interactive Workshop such as this one.

When the Workshop includes using telephone equipment; such as practicing receiving incoming calls from distressed callers, the ratio of equipment available to number of participants should be taken into account.

 Training activities used in the Workshop?

 Trainer presentation, group discussion, small group work, video, role play

 And finally…

 No pre-Workshop preparation is required by the participants

Hand-outs, certificates of attendance and a short report containing a summary of participants’ feedback will be provided