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<\/a>\u201cLiving in Victoria, it\u2019s not difficult to see that we have the opioid crisis, we have people dying every day of drug overdose and poisoned drug supply. People are living on the streets, people are suffering with all kinds of mental-health issues, and by virtue of that, they then end up bumping into the justice system,\u201d says Silden. \u201cI think there are so many people who work frontline who are seeing this and are trying to do what they can to improve the situation. But, part of what the certificate is trying to do is sort of broaden the scope in terms of people working together, and better being able to solve these problems, or at least, begin to address them in a more effective way, by virtue of working together instead of from these siloed positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silden believes the work being done in the program will help to unite frontline workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeaching in the MHCJ is a really wonderful experience. You get to work with students who are working in the field. So, they\u2019re working frontline, somewhere in the justice system, or mental health, or outreach, or addictions, or some kind of frontline position,\u201d says Silden. \u201cIt\u2019s really rewarding to work with them and learn along with them and hear more about what their working lives are like, and how they are helping to kind of break down the silos between justice, mental health, addictions, homelessness in a lot of cases, because, all of those areas, kind of work with similar populations and so, working together is kind of the goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
MHJC student Mikha Skogstad shares a similar sentiment to Silden\u2019s. She was feeling fatigued from being a full-time frontline worker and wanted to strengthen her skills and delve into collaboration efforts being taught in the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took it because I was feeling, I don\u2019t know, maybe a bit burnt out. I was looking for something to refresh my knowledge,\u201d says Skogstad. \u201cI was really drawn to it because it talked a lot about increasing collaboration and communication amongst the different systems that really work with the same clients but, kind of, in different silos. So that\u2019s why I took it. And I definitely feel like I\u2019ve learned a lot more about that, like navigating the different resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skogstad has enjoyed the unique opportunity to work alongside other frontline workers from different departments. She believes that the knowledge being shared from student to student is invaluable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say one of the really neat things about this program is the learning that you can glean from your classmates,\u201d says Skogstad. \u201cSo even though it\u2019s online, and you don\u2019t really interact with people face to face, we\u2019ve had kind of a partnered group for the duration of the courses. It\u2019s been really nice, because you have to work collaboratively on different projects… You really get to know the people that you\u2019re matched up with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collaboration between sectors will also benefit the mental health of frontline workers who are facing various forms of trauma from work. Skogstad believes furthering education as a frontline worker can help boost morale.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn a field like this, where you\u2019re working so much with people who face so much trauma, you know, you can experience vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue; it can be a hard job to have,\u201d Skogstad says. \u201cI find that having ongoing education and collaboration is really important for keeping the morale of the worker up, and to mitigate those negative effects that the work can have on you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Camosun Mental Health and Criminal Justice (MHCJ) instructor Eva Silden recognizes that Vancouver Island is in need of increased communication between frontline workers due to issues relating to mental health and the ongoing drug crisis. That\u2019s what she hopes the MHCJ certificate program can help with. MHCJ is an eight-month program designed to support and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-april-5-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23861,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23859\/revisions\/23861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}