Workshops & Professional Trainings
Building stronger support networks
At Sound Youth Counselling, we believe children, teens, and families benefit from having strong, informed support networks around them. With over 20 years of experience working with young people, we’ve developed an educational branch of service to help those supporting them feel more confident and equipped.
Led by Colleen McLean (MSW RSW) our team offers Mental Health First Aid courses, workshops on big emotions and regulation, educator training, and professional development for teams supporting vulnerable youth.
Courses are available publicly or privately and can be tailored to your group’s needs.
Where we train
Whether you're a school, community organization, or professional team, we bring training to you in person across Parry Sound and Muskoka, or connect virtually with groups anywhere across the country.
In-person: Parry Sound, Huntsville, Bracebridge, Gravenhurst, and the wider Muskoka region (Ontario)
Also serving: the Greater Toronto Area and Southern Ontario
Virtual: Available anywhere in Canada
Community change starts with a willingness to learn and grow together.
Our interactive workshops and trainings offer individuals, communities, and organizations the opportunity to learn, build confidence, and practice new skills and strategies.
Organizations we’ve worked with
About Mental Health First Aid
Mental health first aid training builds the skills to recognize the signs of a mental health problem or crisis, and to respond with confidence and care. Colleen McLean is a certified MHFA trainer, offering the nationally recognized MHFA standard certification and courses designed for for adults who work with youth. Our mental health first aid training in Ontario is available in person or virtually.
This series is for educators, coaches, youth workers, community organizations, and any adult (18+) who wants a foundational, evidence-based understanding of mental health, crisis response, and how to support someone who is struggling.
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3-year Mental Health First Aid Certification
This course is designed for adults (18+ years-old). The 2-day format of the MHFA Certification offers for in-depth, scenario-based training on the identification and support of declining mental health and crises, and provides a deeper understanding of mental health disorders and influences.
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Supporting Youth Mental Health First Aid, Certificate
Help young people navigate mental health challenges with understanding and support. This course offers practical tools to help adults recognize when a young person may be struggling and provides guidance on how to offer meaningful support.
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This interactive workshop provides participants with a foundational understanding of core mental health topics:
An understanding of emotions
Anxiety & Mood Disorders
Suicidal ideation
Intervention and de-escalation strategies
*an advanced level training is available by request
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This workshop is designed to help professional teams respond to challenging clients and system-users and addresses:
recognizing and assessing a mental health crisis.
ways to respond with support.
decompression strategies for care of self.
building a debrief system for your team.
About Big Emotions
We all know how hard it is to witness a young person’s big emotion or big behaviour - we wonder how to help, what to do, and how to stay calm ourselves. These workshops have been intentionally designed to help the adults understand and respond to these feelings and behaviours, like anxiety and hard transitions, without shutting them down or making them worse. Workshops provide a framework for understanding, and focus on practical, relationship-first strategies adults can use right away.
This series is for parents, caregivers, and any adult supporting the emotional well-being of a child or teen.
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Customized workshops are a powerful, cost-effective way to provide mental health training tailored to your specific needs.
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This workshop explores co-regulation (a popular buzz word on social media and parenting platforms right now! so that we can better understand what it is, why it isn’t just “being calm,” and how we can build regulation skills with intention and compassion.
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This workshop explores strategies to support tough transitions through the concepts of Separation Distress and Restraint Collapse: what they are, why they happen, and what we can do to help.
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We all witness young people in our lives struggling with anxious thoughts and feelings, and when we see them struggle we want to help. But what happens when our helping turns into accommodating?
This workshop explores the emotion of anxiety, how it is accommodated, and strategies to support someone struggling.
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This interactive training & workshop is designed to support adults who live and/or work with young people.
Participants learn how to use the PACE method to build connections, navigate challenging emotions, and support communication.
About Learning
We recognize the connection between education and mental health - how we feel about ourselves as a student, impacts our sense of self and peer relationships. These carefully designed workshops help educators and school staff understand the "why" behind classroom behaviour, including how trauma, attention, and nervous system regulation show up in learning environments, and turn that understanding into practical classroom strategies.
This series is for teachers, educational assistants, and school administrators supporting students who struggle with attention, behaviour, or the affects of trauma.
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Customized workshops are a powerful, cost-effective way to provide mental health training tailored to your specific needs.
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Just Pay Attention! (and other things we say that aren’t always helpful)
As adults (especially parents and teachers), we play a significantly role in helping kids develop their internal dialogue and sense of self - am I smart? do I fit in? can I do hard things?
This presentation explores common behaviours that develop with attentional challenges and provides strategies that parents and teachers can use to help.
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This workshop explores behaviours from a place of curiosity. If we can see big, impulsive, explosive behaviours, as the externalization of a dysregulated nervous system that has missed meeting an expectation, then we can work to build empathy and curiosity to better understand why a student might be reacting this way.
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Trauma has a significant impact on brain development and often presents as behavioral and emotional dysregulation, and inattention.
In this training, educators explore implications of trauma within educational settings with a specific focus on:
Understanding trauma's influence on brain development
recognizing behavioral and emotional dysregulation
addressing classroom challenges:
effective response strategies
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This interactive training & workshop is designed to support adults who live and/or work with young people.
Participants learn how to use the PACE method to build connections, navigate challenging emotions, and support communication.
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We all witness young people in our lives struggling with anxious thoughts and feelings, and when we see them struggle we want to help. But what happens when our helping turns into accommodating?
This workshop explores the emotion of anxiety, how it is accommodated, and strategies to support someone struggling.
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When we compare ourselves to others, our self-identity becomes a shifting reaction to the success (or failures) or others. But, if we can see ourselves from a place of self-compassion, we can develop a sense-of-self that is stable and independent of others.
This workshop explores these concepts and strategies we can use to help young people develop a compassionate sense of self.
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This workshop explores strategies to support tough transitions through the concepts of Separation Distress and Restraint Collapse: what they are, why they happen, and what we can do to help.
For Helping Professionals
We recognize the high risk of burnout and compassion fatigue among those in helping professions, and the support that these teams need. Our workshops focus on helping teams build individual and group skills on de-escalation strategies, boundaries, sustainable (and realistic) self-care practices, and more.
This series is for organizations who want to build team member capacity to support themselves and each other as they support vulnerable populations.
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Customized workshops are a powerful, cost-effective way to provide mental health training tailored to your specific needs.
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What IS burnout? And how can we best protect ourselves?
This workshop explores the alignment between personal and organizational values, challenges misconceptions about self-care, and gives you the tools to effectively protect yourself and the meaningful work that you do.
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This interactive workshop is designed to provide team members with the knowledge they need to confidently support dysregulated and/or emotionally vulnerable clients, and strategies to support personal and team member well-being.
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This interactive training & workshop is designed to support adults who live and/or work with young people.
Participants learn how to use the PACE method to build connections, navigate challenging emotions, and support communication.
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We all witness young people in our lives struggling with anxious thoughts and feelings, and when we see them struggle we want to help. But what happens when our helping turns into accommodating?
This workshop explores the emotion of anxiety, how it is accommodated, and strategies to support someone struggling.
Frequently Asked Questions
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All Sound Youth Counselling trainings are led by our clinical team, led by it’s owner and clinical director, Colleen McLean (MSW, RSW). Colleen has over 20 years experience working with children, youth, and families, and facilitating learning opportunities. She is a certified mental health first aid trainer through Opening Minds-Mental Health Commission of Canada.
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Our Mental Health First Aid Certification course is a nationally recognized certification. Our other trainings, like Supporting Youth Mental Health First Aid, Big Emotions, Learning, and Professional Development, are non-certification workshops built for real-world use.
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Yes. Every training we offer can be tailored to your group's needs. Contact us to talk through what would work best for your team.
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Yes. In-person trainings are based in Parry Sound and Huntsville (or elsewhere in Ontario as requested and available), and we offer virtual training to groups anywhere across the country.
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Our workshops and trainings are tailored for adults who work with children and youth.
Our Mental Health First Aid courses are for adults 18+, with versions tailored for those who work with youth ages 12 to 25. Big Emotions, Learning, and Professional workshops are designed for the adults supporting children and youth, not for kids directly.
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Reach out through our contact page with your group size, preferred format, and topics you'd like covered, and we'll help find the right fit.
Bring real, practical mental health training to your team
Whether you need certified mental health first aid training, a workshop on big emotions, or tailored mental health training for your team, we can help you build the skills to support the young people in your care.