Ranch Ehrlo Society held a three day professional development event from August 27-29, 2013.  Staff learned a new approach to suicide prevention and intervention in their work with youth.

Dr. Karen Bax, a clinical and forensic psychologist from the London Family Court Clinic in London, Ontario trained 26 agency employees as suicide intervention/prevention trainers.  The staff were made up from clinicians from the Clinical Assessment office, Ehrlo Counselling Services, caseworkers from the Buckland, Corman Park, Regina and Pilot Butte programs, and three educators.

There are a number of suicide risk factors with youth. At Ranch Ehrlo the risks are often multifaceted and involve mental health issues, family problems, backgrounds with trauma, and peer issues.

Bax added, “Just being an adolescent is a time of finding identity and it can be a tumultuous time for adolescents who are trying to find a way to fit into the world and with others.”

Staff were able to learn the indicators of depression, factors to consider when evaluating risk for suicide, approaches for supporting depressed adolescents, and intervention strategies.

“We go right from really focusing on how importance engagement is, focusing to help the adolescents deal with such significant feeling and experiences to very concrete ways to access and match the level or risk to the level of intervention,” Bax explained.

All the clinicians and educators participating will become agency trainers to help our front line staff who work with high-risk and high-needs youth in residential settings, explained Linda Meyer vice-president of clinical services and research at Ranch Ehrlo. “This training has been tailored so that it can be used in the everyday milieu of working with youth. It may also be of value to external stakeholders as well as to individual adolescents and their families in the community.”

“We are doing a lot of extra exercises for these individuals to help them go back and train and to fit with the specific adolescents they work with.” Bax concluded, “This is a fabulous group, they are very interactive and interested in the material and making it relevant for this organization.”