About the resource
Mental health workers endure considerable stress in the course of carrying out their work. Managing Stress and Violence at Work is a comprehensive training programme designed to enable staff to successfully manage and reduce the affects of occupational stress and violence in the workplace.

Objectives
Managing Stress and Violence at Work improves the quality of working life for mental health workers and the materials in this resource can be adapted by a trainer to suit the particular needs of individual teams. The four training formats provided are:

1. A full, four-day format, the first two days concentrating on stress management and the second two on risk and violence.
2. A two day 'short' format, offering 'edited highlights' of the four-day format and covering elements of occupational stress management and the management of violence
3. A two-day format with a focus on violence in the workplace.
4. A one-day format concentrating on risk assessment.

The materials are intended to be delivered by a trainer with a good practical knowledge of clinical work in the mental health sector.

The training includes the following elements:
Background information for trainers
Managing stress at the organisational level
Managing stress at team and individual levels
Risk management and risk assessment
Developing effective strategies for coping with violence

Benefits to organisations
work-related stress has been consistently identified as one of the major workplace concerns to employees and can ultimately challenge the healthiness and performance of an organisation. The training provided by this resource will empower staff to deal with and reduce workplace stress and violence. It can also be delivered to teams of staff who work together and this approach can be used within organisations to build support and to implement medium-term and long-term strategies to prevent violence and minimise occupational stress.

Vital  information for: all those working in or managing mental health services where staff may experience stress and violence in the workplace. Training can be delivered to mental health service workers in hospitals and community teams, and is relevant across disciplines. It is applicable to all frontline staff as well as other members of the workforce such as support, time and recovery (STR) workers. who may experience stress and violence in the workplace.