Professional Boundaries training for charities

This week I was lucky enough to spend the day working with a homeless charity in Worcester. Maggs provides a day centre where people can drop in, connect with services, get support, do their laundry and even take a shower. They also run outreach services, collect clothing and support homeless people in various centres.

They run with a team of 25 people, providing support and services to some of the most vulnerable people in society and they reached out to me to help the team take the opportunity to reflect on their personal and professional boundaries.

We initially looked at what professional boundaries meant to them and why they were needed, for themselves, for the services users they support and of course for the charity in order to provide the highest level of service.

We then progressed through the in-house training programme that I’ve setup for teams, defining the roles of guide vs. friend, keeping drama out of relationships, and looking at what they are like when boundaries are working well and when they’re not.

We then spent time looking at how each it is for the lines to blur and what happens when that blurring happens and the knock-on effect of not holding them.

Communication and mis-communication was discussed next and how people see things from very different perspectives and how that can lead to a different in opinions and the importance of asking questions to understand what someone really means by what they say.

Finally we looked at feedback, the importance of learning from the past to help shape the way we deal with the future and how to learn and let go of situations so that you can grow and move forward.

Finally the team brainstormed ways of working well together moving forward so that all had the chance to contribute towards best practice and standards when working with each other and the service users.

I’ve worked with a number of charities over the years and always enjoy facilitating lively, interactive and thought-provoking sessions that help the organisation to develop and discuss highly essential policies and procedures that keep the staff and everyone who works within and through the organisation safe.