A signature education program for parents and other caregivers of children and adolescents
living with mental illnesses. It focuses on the fundamentals of caring for the parent or
caregiver, others in the family, and the child living with mental illness.
Participants will learn the necessary skills to conduct a rigorous and effective
6-week course in your community. Topics covered in the training include:
Recognizing mental illness as a continuing traumatic event
for the child and the family
Facing the emotional issues and objective burdens faced by
family caregivers and others in the family
Giving confidence to foster family understanding and
support; and empowering family caregivers to become effective advocates for their
children.
The class uses a guided group process to help families gain practical insight, obtain
important information about research and resiliency, and increase their emotional learning
skills.
By taking this training you are committing to co-teach the Basics course, consisting of 6
weeks of material, at least twice in a 24-month period in cooperation with your local NAMI
affiliate.
You will need to register and interview all prospective students before the class. Each
weekly class requires a lot of pre-class preparation. In some affiliates, the teacher also
needs to find a location for the classes and take care of advertising and publicity. You
will be required to send periodic reports to State and National for their recordkeeping and
upload data into the National NAMI Education Data tracking program. The classes involve
reading aloud from NAMI course materials so applicants need to be comfortable with this.
NAMI Washington will cover the cost of all training materials, food, and lodging. Your NAMI
affiliate is asked to cover your travel expenses. Lodging will be at a nearby hotel, and is
double occupancy, which means you will be sharing a room with another attendee. If you require
single occupancy, arrangements will need to be made prior to your attendance, and there
will be additional costs which will be the responsibility of the attendee.
In order to reserve a space, a $50 refundable registration deposit from your
affiliate is required at the time of registration. If you need to cancel after
being accepted, notify the NAMI Washington staff, no later than a week before the training
so we can fill your spot, or your affiliate will lose its $50 registration deposit.
Cancelled spots are filled with applications from the waiting list for
the class, not by sending another affiliate member.