TRAINING
At Rise2Care we believe in equipping our teams with the training they need to provide compassionate, responsive service to our communities.
Why We're Different
Our Care and Safety Teams receive the highest level of training to assist them as they daily interact with houseless neighbors and the communities they serve. Addressing topics like addiction, trust-building and emotional first aid, this training helps them to work ethically and efficiently using trauma-informed methods that keep everyone safe and well cared for.
Addiction
Addiction is a serious problem that plagues communities of all kinds. When our team members can understand the struggles of addiction, they are better equipped to interact with and support those who struggle with it.
Participants watch Golden Globe Award Movie Beautiful Boy, a story based on memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff. It chronicles the heartbreaking and inspiring experience of survival, relapse and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years. The class splits the movie in half for two discussions on addiction and holds a third session after the movie to talk about what they’ve experienced in the field when interacting with persons experiencing addiction.
Cultural Diversity
This interactive course teaches our team members positive, proactive tools that allow them to effectively and responsibly understand and navigate the rich cultures of the diverse communities in which they live and work.
Participants go over the meaning and benefits of cultural diversity, ways to practice diversity at work and outcomes of cultural diversity. This class is a fully interactive class and requires 100% class participation. This class is partially based on cultural diversity training at the City of Portland that was taught by our VP while he was employed there.
Building Trust
Trust is the foundation of all communication and is particularly important in the outreach work our teams perform every day. This course teaches team members how to quickly and expertly establish common ground to build trust.
In the first hour of the class, participants interact with each other to complete several trust exercises. Then they take time to discuss how those exercises made them feel. In the second half of the class, discussion focuses on how to build trust with individuals in the community.
American Sign Language
This course teaches our teams the basics of American Sign Language so they can communicate with the diverse populations they serve, which includes those who speak or sign foreign languages, including the deaf or hard of hearing.
Participants will learn basic sign language including alphabet, numbers, standard greetings, who/what/when, days of the week, time, medical terms, feelings, weather and family. The class is interactive and team members help teach each section to help them learn and have fun in the process.
Diversity
Prejudice and bias can often be symptoms of ignorance. Rise2Care does its part to make our communities safe spaces for all by providing this training so our team members understand the beauty and benefits of diversity.
Diversity training includes positive intergroup interactions to reduce prejudice, discrimination and harassment. Participants discuss unconscious bias, micro-aggressions and cross-cultural communications. They talk about embracing diverse perspectives and the company’s core values, mission and vision related into inclusion. Participants learn how to apply skills from the class while on the job, especially when interacting with individuals they find on property that do not belong. This class is partially based on cultural diversity training at the City of Portland that was taught by our VP while he was employed there.
Emotional First Aid
Rise2Care teaches our teams how to recognize and understand the emotional wounds resulting from psychological traumas that affect how we view our world so they can understand the actions and experiences of the people they serve.
In the first two hours of this class, participants watch a guest lecture by Dr. Guy Winch, Licensed Psychologist, Author and Keynote Speaker on Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejections, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries. Participants then discuss each strategy in the video and talk about how they can apply the strategies while on the job. In the second half of the class, team members watch an interview with Dr. Guy Winch on healing emotional wounds from his book How do you Heal from Emotional Wounds in the Digital Age and discuss ways they can help heal emotional wounds while on the job.
First Aid / CPR / AED
Knowledge of First Aid, CPR and how to operate an Automatic Electronic Defibrillator (AED) can be the difference between life and death. Team members learn these lifesaving skills so they can fully protect the communities they serve.
Participants follow the EMS Safety First Aid, CPR, AED (OSHA & AHA certified) training course and learn life-saving skills. Each participant must complete each section in order to get full certification.
Trauma Informed Care
Most people have experienced some sort of trauma in their past and have triggers that can result in dangerous behavior. This course gives Rise2Care team members tools to build rapport, assess situations and respond with kindness and respect.
Participants explore how to think about helping people, how to notice triggers, what are lagging skills and why to put emphasis on these skills. To learn this, they walk through real-life scenarios and challenge themselves on how they react and what will/will not be tolerated.
Participants review the crisis development model using real-life examples and talk about the importance of verbal and non-verbal communication as well as the role that both play in helping someone through a crisis. Participants discuss a decision-making matrix of resources to help team members cope with crisis.
Mental Health First Aid
This class prepares our teams to assist with various mental health emergencies, a critical skillset for outreach teams that are constantly interacting with community members and houseless individuals of diverse backgrounds.
Participants learn how to respond in a mental health emergency and offer support to someone who appears to be in emotional distress. In a basic First Aid class we learn that a Band-aid does not fix every injury.
In Mental Health First Aid, participants learn that we cannot always help everyone and not everyone experiencing a mental health emergency has a mental disorder. The class teaches basic knowledge and skills to respond to an individual in distress including signs and symptoms of a variety of diagnosable mental disorders.
Participants will learn about ways to help support someone that may not need professional treatment for what they are experiencing as well as possible ways to assist in specific situations. The class goes over the recovery paradigm, myths of mental disorders and what role team members can play in Mental Health First Aid.