Bluebird’s Training Materials

    

Role Plays and Dialogue:

 

Gayle has developed a variety of common crisis scenarios for enactment in role plays and for discussion following.  Role plays can be very powerful because they allow staff to understand better what might cause crises to occur and ways to prevent them. They are equally as powerful for service recipients to understand the staff perspective as they interchange roles.

 

Role plays can be conducted on patient units in hospitals or in training seminars that involve staff only. When conducted on inpatient units they begin as dialogues in which staff and persons in care are seated among each other equally.  A beginning exercise has people sharing information about themselves with a warm handshake followed by a discussion of their interests and hobbies.  Often, Gayle talks about the history of the consumer/survivor movement, her role in its development and how it has influenced policy development and changes in the mental health system throughout the country.  Local resources for peer support are also talked about. 

 

Discussion leads to role playing.  People volunteer to act as staff or patient.  The scenes help to show the right and wrong ways to handle conflict.  Useful information for the future is usually obtained.  Much discussion follows.  Usually several scenarios are played out on each unit.  The dialogue always ends on a positive note.  Someone sings a song; reads a poem, shares something inspirational or there is a group song or exercise. 

 

             • Role Plays and Dialogues Manual (PDF)

 

Other Topics for discussion include: 

 

Recovery definition

Importance of people’s stories and narratives

Language issues

Appropriate Touching

Dialogues—how to create opportunities for dialogue both informally and formally

Comfort Rooms and Personal Safety Plans

Trauma Informed Care

Peer Specialists Roles in Inpatient settings

Debriefing

Integrating art and creative strategies