Check out our Essential Courses for great value training
CCWT Essential Courses provide key skills and knowledge for community sector workers.
These short courses are suitable for workers new to the sector, but also for experienced workers who are new to that particular topic area. They will give you a great foundation on which to build your practice.
You can search for the whole list of Essential courses by choosing the Essentials tag on the left hand menu here.
CCWT commits to offering these courses both online and face to face a number of times annually. If the available times aren’t suitable for you, click on the Join Waiting List button and you will be notified when a new course is scheduled. You can leave comments about your particular context as well.
Our commitment to building the skills of the community sector is reflected in the reduced price of all Essential Courses:
- $320 per day or
- $300 per day if you are an ACWA member or Corporate Pass holder.
ACWA members are also entitled to a further per person reduction of $20 per day if they register 5 or more people into the same class.
Key Learning Areas
Complex Trauma and Mental Health
Complex developmental trauma is the trauma of childhood neglect, physical and sexual assault, and exposure to family and community violence. This training explores mindful, strengths-based and creative counselling for transformation and recovery.
Double Whammy – Co-occurring Mental Health and Alcohol and Other Drug Disorders
Do you feel daunted by the complexity of challenges that clients experiencing these disorders face? Through presentation of information, discussion and experiential activities you will gain knowledge and skills and increase your confidence to provide effective services for this client group.
Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change
This workshop focuses on a framework for engaging with people in the context of change. It will assist participants to develop skills and knowledge in motivational interviewing and apply the principles and skills to their workplace.
Trauma and Addictions
The link between complex childhood trauma and adult addictions is well known (ACE study). This workshop will explore the theme of addiction as a coping mechanism. Participants will gain the ‘know how to’ provide a balance of trauma and addiction interventions for positive and efficient client growth and recovery.
Trauma Informed Recovery Practice Toolkit
An experiential workshop from a 'lived experience' perspective that engages participants in nitty gritty, day-to-day skills and the knowledge required to most effectively meet and support survivors of significant childhood trauma.
Unpacking the Complexity of Hoarding and Squalor
Hoarding Disorder and Severe Domestic Squalor is on the increase with an estimated 600,000 Australians affected. But how do you work with and support someone living in clutter? Like the proverbial iceberg, it’s not what you can see on top of the water but rather, what’s underneath.
Foster Care Assessment Skills (Step by Step) PRE-REQUISITE
Quality provision of OOHC starts with quality foster care placements for children, and these start with quality carer assessments. Making good, evidenced based decisions about carer applicants' suitability means fewer placement breakdowns for children who have already experienced enough trauma in their lives. This distance education course is the prerequisite to enrol in the 3-day Step by Step course for carer assessors, which runs every 8 weeks.
Guardianship Application Documentation
Unravel the myriad of activities required for a Guardianship application. Practice preparing the key documents: the care plan, the financial plan and the affidavit to support the application.
Shared Lives Training Skills
Develop your skills and confidence in conducting effective Shared Lives carer training.
Child Mental Health Toolkit: Assessment, Planning and Case Management for Children and Young People with Mental Health Issues
Spend time with a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a psychologist to develop skills in identifying, assessing and managing common mental health disorders in children and adolescents, including anxiety, depression, post- traumatic stress disorder, attachment disorders, autism, ADHD and conduct disorder.
Child Protection – Identify and Respond to Children and Young People at Risk
Essential training for mandatory reporters, covering updated child protection legislation and its application when delivering services to children and/or their families.
Children’s Brain Development: Understanding the Impacts of Trauma, Supporting Resilience and Recovery (formerly The Neurobiology of Childhood Trauma)
Learn about the influences of early childhood trauma and abuse on the developing brain, nervous system, human behaviour and memory, as well as ways to support resilience and recovery.
Difficult Conversations with Resistant Parents
Explore an effective conversation style that utilises both a psychobiological and curiosity approach to engaging parents who are classified as involuntary clients and often labelled as resistant to engagement.
Domestic and Family Violence: Understanding the Impact on Children
Learn about the implications of living with domestic violence for children’s development and their physical and mental wellbeing, and explore strategies to support children who have experienced domestic violence.
Engaging Parents: Establishing a Working Alliance with Parents/Carers of Children and Young People at Risk
Enhance your clinical practice through proven skills and strategies to positively engage parents from the outset in your work with children and young people at risk.
Working with Children and Young People Affected by Family and Domestic Violence
This is an advanced level workshop that assumes that participants have a foundational knowledge of the dynamics of Family and Domestic Violence, neurobiology of traumatic stress, and the implications of Family and Domestic Violence on the development of attachment security.
Accidental Counsellor
Build skills, confidence and frameworks to respond effectively to people experiencing difficulties and emotional distress, whilst remaining attentive to self care in this participative and practical workshop.
Applying a Trauma Informed Approach
Learn about the impacts of trauma, particularly complex trauma, and discuss strategies to work more effectively with trauma survivors, including strategies for the individual worker and the service system.
Complex Case Management
Case management can be complex, exhausting, challenging, inspiring and rewarding. Extend your skills, knowledge and confidence to provide quality case management to clients who are experiencing complex issues and challenges including: mental distress, AOD misuse/dependence, trauma and homelessness.
Effective Casework and Case Management
Learn the fundamentals of quality case management, and develop essential skills and strategies in key aspects of strengths-based and person-centred case management.
Engaging and Supporting Young People
How do you catch a young person's attention quickly and meaningfully? Relationship is the essential ingredient to engagement. This workshop explores how you can do this in a variety of ways, including when you have little time and in circumstances that are less than ideal.
Safe Home Visiting
Whether you are just starting your home visits or are experienced and want to review/refresh your practice, this workshop will help you to make your home visits safer and more productive. Use case scenarios and participant experiences to explore good practice policy, procedures and strategies.
Writing Case-notes and Documentation
Learn structured ways to ensure that your case-notes and documentation are clear, useful and consistent, and will hold up to scrutiny.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
This introductory workshop will provide participants with an overview of the six core processes of ACT and the skills to develop and strengthen psychological flexibility in their own lives and those of their clients.
Clinical Supervision: Models and Methods
This workshop harnesses the existing knowledge, experience and skills of workers, and provides them with practice frameworks and skills for offering support and direction to others.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: Introduction
CBT can be an effective therapy for many mental health issues including depression and anxiety. In this introductory course, you will discuss CBT theory, understand when CBT approaches are most appropriate, and be assisted in applying basic practical CBT strategies personally and professionally.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy: Part A and Part B
Working with suicidal and self harm behaviour can trigger anxiety, hopelessness, uncertainty and feeling ineffective. This is a two-part (4 day) course that provides a complete overview of the core concepts and skills utilised within DBT.
Introduction to Narrative Therapy
Learn about Narrative Therapy, the hopeful approach to counselling and community work that is responsive to the politics of therapy in an accessible, fun and thoughtful way.
Debriefing Skills
Promote staff wellbeing and retention by implementing comprehensive debriefing processes and stress management strategies. This workshop considers debriefing and organisational processes, including those required for critical incidents and legal considerations.
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership
Increase your skills and confidence in planning for, recognising, and responding to highly charged, emotional and volatile training/group facilitation settings.
New Managers and Coordinators
Gain new skills and tools that will assist you to be effective in your role as a manager or coordinator. This workshop includes topics such as supervision, managing team conflict, planning and prioritising and problem solving.
Professional Supervision: How and Why?
Supervision can be more than a ‘quick fix’. We will explore the framework of four functions of supervision (accountability, support, development and mediation) and how to establish and lead effective supervision.
Team Leadership
We will discuss strategies and use resources to bring together different capabilities in the team, facilitate communication with all stakeholders, lead planning, and promote problem solving.
Family Group Conferencing Facilitator Training
This course will equip you with the skills and knowledge needed to be a Family Group Conferencing Facilitator. It includes mediation and negotiation skills, and a range of practical strategies to assists families to make child-centred decisions. It meets the requirement for a mediation qualification to be part of the FACS tender of accredited FGC Facilitators.
Life Story Work Foundations
This workshop will introduce you to Life Story Work and provide you with the skills to undertake Life Story Work with children and young people. It includes strategies to involve adults in the process.
Transition from Care: Planning to Leave Care
Explore the impact of transition from care on young people, incorporate essential aspects and services in their Transition from Care Plan and identify ways of involving young people and important supports in their future plan.
Communicating with Confidence Series
This Series has been designed to help those who would like to improve their key communication skills in short 1.5-hour online training sessions. Each comes with pre-work, a workbook to use as we travel through the session and post-work in the form of reflective questions for participants to answer and share with their teams if they choose.
Managing Challenging Behaviours
Increase your skills and confidence in managing the challenging behaviours of co-workers and clients in this practical, participative and reflective workshop that maximises self-awareness and clearly defined strategies.