Helping skills for daily life course – information for volunteers

More helpers from the Helping skills for daily life courses!

On the Helping skills for daily life course, common to all Red Cross activity groups, participants practise meeting a person in need of help and acting in everyday helping situations. These can include, for example, the skills to recognise the need for help and to give immediate first aid.

Every Finnish Red Cross branch can organise a Helping skills for daily life course, provided that there is expertise and interest in the themes within the branch's area. The Helping skills for daily life course is a low-threshold course in which, alongside practising helping skills, you can also tell people about the branch's other activities, such as psychological support, first aid group or friend activities.

How can a branch organise a Helping skills for daily life course?

When organising Helping skills for daily life courses, you can print the stations from the Material Bank.

The duration of the training session depends on how and with which modules the training is carried out according to the needs of the target group. The Helping skills for daily life course can last one to two lessons (2 x 45 min). The action instruction cards explain how to proceed in various helping situations.

Helping skills can also be practised using individual task cards in Red Cross café activities, prison visits, schools and educational institutions, or at various events. If you wish, you can also grab a single task card as a highlight for a fair.

Getting new volunteers involved

In connection with the Helping skills for daily life course, it is worth recruiting new people to the activities, and it is important to focus on presenting the local Red Cross activities.

Read the implementation guide in the Material Bank. The implementation guide is currently available only in Finnish. The English version of the guide will be updated in the Material bank later.

Helping skills for daily life course for families with children

Welcome to teaching first aid skills to families with children! The Helping skills for daily life course for families with children is a 1.5-hour course introducing the basics of first aid, tailored especially to the needs of families with children. In the training, parents and children practise together the accident prevention and first aid skills that are important for families with children. On this course, children are helpers too!

Every branch can organise a Helping skills for daily life course, as basic knowledge of first aid is enough to organise it. The course instructors should review the topics to be taught in advance, for example on the Red Cross website https://www.redcross.fi/first-aid/

Families can take part in the course either as parent-child pairs or as a whole family. The course implementation guide is designed for a course with 20 participants. Two to three instructors are needed for the course.

The course implementation guide, action instruction cards and course certificates can be ordered as a course package free of charge from the Red Cross online shop (log in to the branch view to see the materials available to order).

You can explore the materials by downloading the low-resolution attachments below. However, order the materials for the course from the online shop so that you have the high-quality printed products at your disposal.

A web page has also been produced about the course content: https://www.punainenristi.fi/punaisen-ristin-viikko/auttajataidot/ (available in Finnish and Swedish)

Materials:

• Toteutusohje Lapsiperheen auttajakurssi (Implementation guide Helping skills for daily life course for families with children, available in Finnish only)
• Toimintaohjekortit Lapsiperheen auttajakurssi (Action instruction cards Helping skills for daily life course for families with children, available in Finnish only)
• Todistus Lapsiperheen auttajakurssi (Certificate Helping skills for daily life course for families with children, available in Finnish only)