Training maketh the practitioner!
As I said at the bottom of this post, there is no doubt that if we have had a lot of difficulties to overcome and have worked through the difficulties and are interested in helping others we can make very good practitioners in supporting families in our Focus Group.
In a post in the Chapter on Important Descriptions, I described the qualities that wise, strong and committed individuals within the Focus Group possess. Almost always, the big challenge will be getting the balance right between how to be involved and still be separate.
Because our personal and professional growth is as much experiential as didactic [1] in the real world, both types need to be reflected in the training offered. In experiential learning, what is sometimes known as the experience curve is particularly relevant. This simply means that the more we do of something the better we get at it.
So, from the organisational point of view, if we are committed to involving people who have been very hurt in our work, it is important to get the balance right between challenging people in their learning and ensuring that what is offered is both relevant and attractive to interested, enthusiastic people (of which there are many in communities).
And like the supervision [2] offered, the training undergone in an agency needs to be congruent and empathic with the work to be done.
If we have had a lot of formal education we need to be willing to learn from those who have learned by more non-formal methods, and vice-versa, because it is in the blend that the real strength lies. (This is where two-way knowledge flow comes in).
And because the work to be done is primarily of an emotional nature, the training needs to have a significant emotional component too – matched with practical skills and down to earth common sense.
[1]. Experiential means learning from experience and didactic means the traditional classroom type learning that all of us who went to school are familiar with.
[2]. A lot of good learning arises from supervision while on the job.