What am I applying to lead?
NAMI Basics is a signature education program for parents and other caregivers of children and adolescents living with mental illnesses. It focuses on the fundamentals of caring for the parent or caregiver, others in the family, and the child living with mental illness.
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NAMIWA Staff
Next Steps:
Your local affiliate will reach out to interview you over the phone or on Zoom.
You will then be interviewed by the state trainer on Zoom.
If you are accepted for training, you will be sent a binder of training materials.
On the day of, you will log into your Zoom training!
What will I learn from the training?
Participants will learn the necessary skills to conduct a rigorous and effective 6-week course in your community. Topics covered in the training include recognizing mental illness as a continuing traumatic event for the child and the family; facing the emotional issues and objective burdens faced by family caregivers and others in the family; gaining confidence and stamina to foster family understanding and support; and empowering family caregivers as effective advocates for their children. The class uses a guided group process to help families gain practical insight, obtain important information about research and resiliency, and increase their emotional learning skills.
What is required of me after I take the training?
By taking this training you are committing to co-teach the Basics course, consisting of 6 weeks of material, at least twice in a 24-month period in cooperation with your local NAMI affiliate.
You will need to register and interview all prospective students before the class. Each weekly class requires a lot of pre-class preparation. In some affiliates, the teacher also needs to find a location for the classes and take care of advertising and publicity. You will be required to send periodic reports to State and National for their recordkeeping and upload data into the National NAMI Education Data tracking program. The classes involve reading aloud from NAMI course materials so applicants need to be comfortable with this.