This session is designed to increase participant’s confidence initiating professional prenatal relationships with clients that create value, empowerment and positive change in their own and their client’s lives. Based on research with birth doulas, the information has been found to be relevant to any professional working with pregnant families. We will cover topics for prenatal visits, relationships with partners, and an exercise in reflection and cultivating wisdom. Different kinds of prenatal relationships will be covered, from the one hour visit in a volunteer program to a multi year relationship in a community program. We will spend time turning the seven principles of Powerful Prenatal Relationships into personal actions (from the last chapter in Dr. Gilliland’s book, The Heart of The Doula). Flexibility is built into the outline to meet the specific needs of the participants who are present that day.
Participants will be able to:
- Apply the seven principles of powerful prenatal relationships to create value, empowerment and positive change in their own and their client’s lives.
- Create an effective schema of topics to use at prenatal visits for a variety of client types.
- Determine best approaches to involving partners in their own prenatal relationship with the doula, nurse, or family visitor.
- Characterize and reinforce that the doula's primary role of support of their clients is the most valuable and helpful; rather than being a problem solver, fixer or educator.
- Utilize the nine questions from the Debriefing The Visit Exercise to develop insight into themselves and their clients.
What recent participants are saying:
Content:
"Amy is a wonderful trainer and is very well versed in her areas of expertise. She is always accommodating with learning materials to enhance the training experience."
"I feel better equipped with resources to structure my prenatal meetings."
"I especially liked the part about the importance of our own process for growth and reflection."
"I really appreciated how much Amy emphasized partners. Partners needs are often a topic that gets overlooked. I feel as though this was my biggest take away that I was not planning for, and I couldn't be any more grateful."
Presentation:
"This was a very comfortable and easy to follow workshop, with informative content and reminders."
"The time flew by so fast!"
Value:
"Great class! Usable information."
"This was very eye opening for me to see as a topic for this training. It was refreshing to have tools that I can use tangibly.