A Workshop for the Prevention, Identification and Management of Interpersonal Violence.
Although we all wish it were not so, interpersonal violence is an unfortunate reality. Every year employees, students and citizens across Canada are intimidated, harassed and often physically assaulted. The trend of violent incidents has continued to rise steadily every year. Sadly, this is the reality of the complicated world in which we live.
The impact of workplace violence costs government and private industry millions of dollars every year. Worse than the financial costs, however, are the deletrious emotional impacts and risks of physical injury (which in some extreme cases can be serious bodily harm or death) to the subject of the violent behaviour.
The world in which we live continues to become increasingly violent. Whether you live or work in a remote location, a large city or your company or clients travel to other countries, there exists a risk of interpersonal violence. Every day the media bombards us with incidents of violence in our communities ranging from workplace violence, violent incidents in our schools, on our campuses, in our malls and churches. Our society continues to struggle against the dramatic increase in the proliferation of drug and alcohol-related violent crimes.
The Personal Awareness and Safety Training program will encourage the student to change the way we think about our safety. The training will challenge you to foster and maintain an attitude of personal awareness and safety; an attitude that will reduce the risk of violence happening to you, both on the job and in your personal life.
The underlying philosophy of any functional violence mitigation strategy is the focus on recognition and avoidance. That is, how to have a consistent level of awareness that permits early recognition of the escalating potential for physical violence and strategies for intervening in appropriate ways that increase the opportunity to, first and foremost, avoid a physical confrontation.
Having recognized that the majority of violent encounters can be predicted and avoided, the training you will receive will focus heavily on these strategies. However, we must also acknowledge that in some situations physical violence can find us quickly seemingly without any prior indications. In these circumstances, you will need to have a level of mental preparedness that will allow you to employ the necessary physical maneuvers to defeat your attacker's assault and allow you to disengage to a position of relative safety.
"In ourselves our safety must be sought, by our own right hand is must be sought."
William Wordsworth
