Telephone Counselling for GBV Survivors: a Pacific Toolkit. This toolkit is to assist trainers to develop the skills of gender based violence (GBV) counsellors and caseworkers to further improve telephone counselling skills.
The Pacific Toolkit, launched in November 2021, is designed to support the training of counsellors who deliver GBV counselling over the phone including phone conversations, text and chat messaging. Counselling is an essential element of the gender-based violence (GBV) referral pathway for survivors to access support and recovery services. Phone counselling, where you speak with a counsellor via the phone rather than face-to-face in a room, can be an effective option for survivors of violence unable to visit a crisis centre.
Training materials
A ‘do no harm’ approach is applied to disseminate the toolkit only to counsellors who are receiving training on its use (to book your GBV counselling telephone skills training, and to access the toolkit, email: pwl@spc.int )
The Pacific Toolkit comprises a complete training package ready for delivery. The course is a mix of foundational family violence counselling and case management skills. To build essential telephone counselling skills, the training uses a wide range of experiential and participatory learning exercises, discussion, practical examples, and role plays.
- A Pacific Toolkit – a comprehensive training manual with step-by-step instructions, activities and session plans
- Audio files – these ‘real life’ role-play simulations provide training participants with examples of phone counselling to think about and discuss.
- PowerPoint Presentations (ready to use) – Each training module in the Pacific Toolkit has its own PowerPoint presentation that trainers can use. These are comprehensive, Pacific-specific, easy to use presentations to help trainers deliver the toolkit’s training modules.
Developed for the Pacific
Development of the Pacific Toolkit has been led by Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development (Pacific Women) in collaboration with Pacific crisis centres: Women United Together Marshall Islands (WUTMI), Chuuk Women’s Council and the Women and Children’s Crisis Centre Tonga (WCCC). The toolkit is supported by Australia through Pacific Women.
Much of the material has been adapted from training resources developed and delivered by Pacific Women. It was initially used for pilot training for the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, and then further trialled with partners based in Tonga, Vanuatu, and Solomon Islands.
The trainings have been as part of the evolving response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to remote service provision and the delivery of GBV counselling over the phone.
