Introduction:
Welcome to The Grief Box for Carers Workshop series. This is a six-part series, delivered one session per month over six months. The intention of this training is to empower carers through processing grief, gaining, and understanding of self and others and exploring the emotions that it around the carer journey. This is a transformational, experiential learning and conversational-styled workshop that is a combination of lived experience wisdom, grief literacy and emotional intelligence theory. It is intended that most of the learning will happen through group discussions and personal reflection.
Session 3: Discovering My Voice - 17 June 2025 | 9:30am-12:30pm
Carers are often overwhelmed by a complex health system and navigating legal responsibilities. Asking questions, responding to requests for information, advocating for consideration in systems that are complex and difficult, can be stressful and seem overwhelming.
This session seeks to create an understanding of how to use your voice to be heard in a system that is sometimes deaf. Strategies for presenting your case objectively, enlisting the support of others and navigating systems successfully will be covered. It will also create an awareness of how being emotionally intelligent can transform interactions with others and help you get what you need in a respectful way.
Many carers struggle with the change in relationship dynamics following the incapacitation or reduced capacity of the person for whom they are caring. Where previously a partner may have played a very practical role in the relationship, they may now not be able to complete practical tasks. This causes an ambiguous loss in the relationship and there is a grief associated. Further, wellness can fluctuate. Where lack of function may be extreme at one time, it may be less extreme at another. How does the carer manage these dynamic changes in power in the relationship? This session will explore the dynamics of relationships, ambiguous loss due to changes in capacity and separating the person from the illness or physical, psychological or emotional limitation. It will help the carer to expand their awareness of others and increase their emotional intelligence.
Session length:
3 hours, with generous food/drink/networking break at an appropriate time in the session to be determined by the facilitator in consultation with the group.
Mode of delivery:
Face-to-face
Objectives:
- To explore the expeirences of carers interacting with health and other government and business systems.
- To provide a strategy for voicing concerns and asking for what you need.
- To explore the value of Emotional Intelligence in navigating human to human encounters.
- To explore boundaries and their value for carers.
Discounts:
Early Bird Discount -10% (Code: EARLYBIRD)
Concession Discount - $10 (Code: CONCESSION)
About the Facilitator:
Hayley Solich is a carer with experience delivering carer engagement training into 15 public mental health facilities in Western Australia. She is the past Carer Co-Chair of the National Mental Health Consumer & Carer Forum, and a mutli-award winning community engagement specialist and educator.
Hayley is no stranger to grief and loss, having lived through the tragic loss of a parent to road trauma in her early 20s, the same year that her two grandmothers passed away. She has now also survived the death of a child through miscarriage, her mother-in-law’s death to brain cancer, a friend’s suicide and her father and father-in-law’s passing.
“Not all loss relates to death. I first recognised that I was experiencing ambiguous loss when I sat in a carer’s group and the person next to me started speaking about their feelings in relation to their partner’s incapacitation due to a brain injury. I started to cry because I realised that my loss was the same. My partner was incapacitated due to physical and mental health conditions, and I was also sad that he could no longer do the things he used to do,” says Hayley. “This started a journey of healing for me because when you know what you are feeling and you can put words to it, you are then empowered to address your pain.”
Hayley joined The Grief Centre of Western Australia team in 2021 as a volunteer, chairing the Management Committee, and is now working as the Business & Engagement Lead and as an Educator.
