New Leitrim childcare course tackles 'empathy fatigue and burnout'

An Erasmus+ Project, for which Leitrim County Childcare Committee are a lead partner, has commenced this week titled  ‘Overcoming Empathy Fatigue in your work with children and young people’.  

The programme, which is the first of it's kind in Ireland, is tailored for childcare professionals and is being delivered over a 5-day residential programme by two highly skilled Austrian trainers with participants from Austria, Hungary, Italy alongside Irish participants.

The training is being delivered at Brú Moytura, Ecolodge, Castlebaldwin and started on Tuesday 7th April and concludes on Sunday 12th April.

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Manager of Leitrim County Childcare Committee (Leitrim CCC), Tommy Lavelle said that "as part of Leitrim CCC we're committed to providing the newest professional opportunities for those working in the Early Years sector and also the school-age childcare sector and the home-based childcare sector or childminding sector. We have over 50 services in total in the county and as part of our extension of that commitment, we applied for funding for an Erasmus+ Plus Project on overcoming empathy fatigue and tools for those who are working with children and young people. Because it's an Erasmus+ Plus project, it's an inter-European project so we have partner organisations from Hungary, Italy and Austria."

He said the course is being facilitated by two Mindfulness teachers and "it's based on a programme developed by a German psychiatrist called Mindful Compassionate Education. It's a combination of an introduction to Mindfulness techniques and Self Compassion techniques for those working professionally, or in a voluntary capacity, with children and young people. Research shows that a lot of people working in that sector, because of the pressure they are under and short-staffing and burnout and over extension of your professional role, can become stressed."

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He said that the course is an introduction to "those who haven't had that kind of experience before so they can add to their own set of tools of how they deal with the stress and burnout that sometimes can be associated with that work because they constantly have to over-extend themselves within the role to fill the gaps."

He said the course is going well but partipants "were a little bit thrown in terms of current events in relation to fuel protests because for a lot of the participants from the other countries, it's not as simple as getting from Vienna to Dublin; we were very conscious that we wanted to bring this into the Leitrim region and North West because these projects can often be centred around the accessibility of the East coast due to the airports. A lot of people spent 12 to 14 hours getting here but they did manage it."