Shelter Tas is pleased to announce that we have secured Monica Lord, an experienced Accredited Mental Health Social Worker, to deliver a targeted ‘Working with people affected by hoarding and squalor’ training session for the Housing & Homelessness sector. Monica delivers this session for Q Shelter and has come highly recommended.

Working with people affected by hoarding and squalor – online training session

This training will provide participants with tools for screening & assessment in both outreach & non-outreach settings plus risk management.

Hoarding and squalor can have a significant impact on health and wellbeing of individuals and surrounding communities. It can also have implications for tenancy sustainment. This training will explore the complexities of working with hoarding and squalor. It will provide participants with a better understanding of hoarding and squalor, tools for screening and assessment in both outreach and non-outreach settings, risk management processes and strategies (particularly to manage issues such as environmental safety, animal safety, child safety and fire hazards) and strategies to implement a brief intervention.

'Trash or Treasure' utilises best-practice frameworks to increase the confidence of clinical and non-clinical workers to providing a respectful, client centred intervention. The training draws on theory, skills and strategies from therapeutic frameworks such as Motivational Interviewing, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and actively focuses on harm minimisation strategies.

This training is suitable for tenancy and property managers of community housing providers, support workers of specialist homelessness services, mental health case managers, and local government officers.

Participants at the end of the workshop will:

Understand hoarding behaviours as a distinct category of mental health concern, and recognise the various contributing factors.
Identify a range of screening and assessment tools for hoarding behaviours and squalor
Appreciate the inherent risks of hoarding and squalor environments and apply appropriate risk mitigation and management strategies to their practice.
Identify, understand and apply a range of brief interventions to support hoarding behaviours, including realistic intervention planning, respectful decluttering, SMART goal setting, motivational interviewing, and successful change planning. Participants will also learn skills to support emotionally dysregulated clients.
Identify and implement harm minimisation strategies

Your facilitator for the day

Monica Lord is the owner of Flourish Therapy & Consulting, the founder of the Australia Centre for Hoarding, Squalor and Clutter, and a passionate, enthusiastic Accredited Mental Health Social Worker.

Monica holds a Bachelor of Social Work from Griffith University, a Master of Youth Mental Health from University of Melbourne and is a current PhD Candidate at Griffith University. Monica has 15 years direct clinical experience working with children, young people, women and families, and has spent 8 years running her own private practice on the Gold Coast. Monica is also a lecturer in Social Work at Griffith University.

In 2014, Monica was granted project funding to improve how workers engage people with hoarding behaviours. "Trash or Treasure" was developed in 2017 from the continued identified community need for quality training in working with hoarding behaviours, and to date, more than 800 participants have completed the training across Australia. Monica is a well-regarded training facilitator and has developed and facilitated a number of other professional development programs. Monica is also the founder of the Australian Centre for Hoarding Squalor and Clutter which is launching in 2024.

Session method: Online MS Teams

Requirements: Participants must join on a device with camera and microphone access, the camera is required to be turned on for the training session. 10-minute breaks will be provided each hour.

Eligibility and Available Places: Places are subsidised and exclusively available for employees of eligible Shelter Tas member organisations, Specialist Homelessness Services and Community Housing Providers. Total numbers at each session will be strictly capped in order to ensure quality of training.

More information: Participants will be provided with a MS Team link 10 days prior to the training session. If you have any further questions, please email Trish the Administration and Projector Coordinator at training@sheltertas.org.au