Who we serve

Frontline HIV/AIDS caregivers meet enormous personal and professional challenges. As a result, turnover is high and many who continue are challenged to function well due to “compassion fatigue”. Challenges include:

• Ongoing deaths and inescapable shadow of death
• Stigmatized work
• Complex and acute disease manifestation
• Work with diverse populations.

ABPO supports frontline workers through sessions which provide:

• Recognition of their responses as “normal responses to an abnormal situation”
• Team solidarity
• Opportunity to develop the necessary coping skills
• Enhanced peer support capabilities
• Understanding of the impact of the work on themselves and others
• Self confidence and pride in their work
• Renewed inspiration
• Ongoing, sustainable recommitment

ABPO helps strengthen organizational capacity by:

• providing practical workshops,
• providing thorough training programs,
• helping HIV/AIDS workers constantly adapt to unavoidably complex issues,
• revealing and building resiliency skills.

Training for Support Workers:
In 1999, ABPO trained 56 Support Workers in Ontario. This 5-day training is based on the principles of holistic health and served to support Support Workers in their own grief, as well as train them to work with service users experiencing loss and multiple loss. The training was evaluated post intervention and again, 6 months later. Results included improved counselling skills and ability to work with grief and loss.

Training for Volunteer Co-ordinators:
In 2000, ABPO trained 20 Volunteer Co-ordinators from Ontario on how to address the grief and loss as part of their Volunteer Orientation. It was also based on the necessity of understanding the impact of grief and multiple loss on volunteers.  The desired outcome of this work is to help volunteers maintain their health, efficiency and strength of commitment, which are an invaluable component of AIDS services. We perceived a significant ripple effect from this training, as a Volunteer Coordinator’s awareness and resources are informing many volunteers and populations they are serving.

Training topics covered include:

Establishing Safety
Creating guidelines for risk-taking
Comprehensive Attachment Grief/Loss theory
Inviting exploration: Loss History
Creating an environment for Reflection/Integration
Group building exercises
How to use various teaching tools
Understanding Multiple Loss, the Shattering of Assumptions and the Need to make Meaning
Holistic Health, Change Theory and Building Capacity (Internal Reliance)
Closure Theory

Organizational Transition

Part of the complexity of working in HIV/AIDS is that transition, or the experience of feeling in a state of “chaos” can begin to feel like the “norm”. Understanding the interelationship between AIDS-related loss and Transition theory can help normalize the challenges of working in HIV/AIDS, resulting in enhanced team functioning as members recognize and respect individual difference of response within a shared milieu. Training materials regarding our workshops on this topic are currently being developed.