€100 deposit refundable on course completion and attendance at a minimum of four course days.

The course has been funded by the National HSCP Office, HSE. As such, places are available to social workers in the publicly funded healthcare service only.

Social work has 9 places on this interdisciplinary course which is a collaboration led by the IASW with IASLT, ISCP, and IIRRT.

The Mindfulness-based Health and Social Care (MBHSC) group programme is a unique mindfulness-based programme which focusses on improving the self-care and practice of health and social care professionals. MBHSC is a theory and evidence-informed programme which focusses on reducing stress, emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation of service users/patients, improving well-being and a range of practice skills and competencies. 

MBHSC will be delivered over a 6-week period from Tuesday 28^th October. Single weekly sessions will be 1.5 hours in duration from 6 -7.30pm each week on

• 28th October
• 4th November 
• 11th November
• 18th November
• 25th November
• 2nd December   

Weekly sessions will be facilitated online on MSTeams by Dr. Alan Maddock. Dr. Maddock is a professionally qualified social worker who specialised in mental health social work, and is currently a Lecturer in Psychology. Dr. Maddock developed the MBHSC programme, is a trained mindfulness facilitator, and has over 10 years mindfulness meditation experience.

Programme Structure

Each session will adhere to a standardised protocol and will cover health and social care practice exercises and topics which were examined within the context of mindfulness.

The course structure will consist of:

Week 1: Introduction to mindfulness: theory and practice.

Week 2: Mindfulness for health and social care practice: Stress, the thinking process, avoidant coping, and decentering.

Week 3: Approach coping: Attachment, aversion, negative thinking, and approach coping.

Week 4: Acceptance – the thinking process, approach coping, and staying present with service users/patients.

Week 5: Self-Compassion – the thinking process, approach coping, and staying present with service users/patients.

Week 6: Embedding mindfulness in our everyday lives and practice.

Each session will introduce different mindfulness-based practices (e.g. mindful body scanning, mindful yoga) and psychoeducation on the potential role that mindfulness could play in our self-care, and professional practice. Participants will be provided with psychoeducation on practical ways in which to apply the experiential learning attained from these practices when confronted with stressful personal and/or practice situations. The development of mindfulness is predicated upon regular and repeated practice, thus participants will be requested to engage in daily mindfulness-based homework exercises for 20 minutes per day, for 6 out of the 7 days, between sessions. Each session will include practice role plays and discussion. This will allow participants to have an opportunity to apply their evolving experiential learning to a practice case context.