a) Effective Engagement in Social Work through Psychoanalysis
This training has been developed to address the gaps in social work training. This training was built from the ground up through a qualitative research with social workers aimed at understanding directly about their experiences and challenges emanating from their work in the community. After synthesizing the research data and organizing it in themes, four modules were identified and developed. These modules are grounded in theory and designed to be experiential in order to train social workers actively working in the field, managerial staff in social sector organizations and students pursuing social work courses.
Each module has a different focus on the selfhood of the social worker interacting with the community they work with. It focuses on helping the participants understand the experiences of their field work and identify the questions and struggles they face while working in the community. The modules are “Self and Mental Well-being”; “Effective Engagement in the Community”; “Reporting” and “Fantasies of Change and Transformation”. The training is designed to fit different logistical demands of an organization and hence, can be tailor made to suit different needs.
b) Sensitivity Training for Early Childhood Care and Education
The training was aimed at Ambedkar University Delhi’s Masters programme students to equip them with an understanding of self, listening and empathy as they prepare themselves for work in the areas of Early Childhood Care. Through experiential exercises, the participants were helped in increasing their capacity to bear the opening up of their psychological and emotional roles when they enter the professional world. Working with children and families of different backgrounds requires one to engage with the tension between the difference of one’s own and others’ worldviews which was enabled through reflections within the workshop.
c) Understanding and Working with Prejudice and Marginalization
The research project for this training is underway to gather information and analyze the data collected into pertinent themes. These themes will be further developed into modules using theory from the field of psychoanalysis and other social sciences. Another aim of this ongoing research is to enable trainings for mental health professionals and organizations to include reflexivity and understanding about prejudice at play in their work, its impact and people’s coping mechanisms as well as systems which enable resilience against the same.
