The Working Mind
Long-Term Care Manager
Leading in long-term care means carrying both the weight of your residents
and the weight of your team.
Long-term care managers lead people through some of the most emotionally demanding work in any sector. Your staff lived through the pandemic's uncontrolled outbreaks, the deaths of residents you had cared for, and a level of public scrutiny few other fields ever faced. Many are still carrying that weight today. You're expected to hold your teams together through all of it, often while carrying the exact same grief and exhaustion yourself, and usually without having been given any training for what that actually requires.
In 2022, the Government of Canada invested $1.2 million for the Canadian Association for Long-Term Care (CALTC) to partner with the Mental Health Commission of Canada to build a version of this training specifically for long-term care managers, supervisors, and frontline staff. That funding was part of a larger $50 million federal investment aimed at supporting frontline and essential workers experiencing PTSD and trauma as a direct result of the pandemic. Exceptional leadership skill alone can't prepare someone to navigate that kind of institutional trauma. This program provides the framework to do it.
How leaders respond to these ongoing pressures matters. You set the tone for whether mental health gets talked about at all. This program delivers the objective frameworks and psychological tools needed to establish a safer, more resilient workplace culture where your staff feel seen, supported, and structurally protected.
$375 per person. Virtual. Canada-wide.
Don't see a date that works? Get in touch. Token is happy to arrange additional sessions for your care team's leadership, including in-person delivery.
Hello@ateliermhl.ca
Long Term Care workers entered the pandemic already at elevated risk. A decade of data (2014-2024) comparing care aide burnout levels shows emotional exhaustion increased sharply during COVID-19, and professional efficacy has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Managers are leading teams still carrying that weight.
Hospital News, 2025, reporting research by Janice Keefe, Mount Saint Vincent University
The Curriculum
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Developed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, this evidence-based program speaks directly to the realities of long-term care leadership: chronic understaffing, high turnover, and the compassion fatigue that comes with the job. It's delivered by a facilitator who has managed teams herself, not just studied them. The videos, scenarios, and case studies throughout are drawn directly from long-term care settings, including stories shared by real long-term care staff about their own mental health struggles and recovery. Exceptional care depends on sustainable leadership, so this course protects your own resilience just as much as it builds your ability to support your team. What happens in the room reflects what you're already living day to day.
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We'll start by setting a foundation for mental health and wellness specifically within the context of long-term care. This module dives into the structural impact of stigma in healthcare, looking at how facility culture determines whether a frontline worker feels safe to ask for help, or feels forced to burn out in silence.
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Next, we'll introduce the Mental Health Continuum Model, a practical framework that takes the guesswork out of team management. You'll learn how to track early behavioral indicators of distress across your shifts, giving you the confidence to intervene and open a supportive dialogue long before an employee reaches a breaking point.
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After lunch, we'll shift our focus entirely to you. Healthcare leadership comes with unique psychological demands, including moral injury and vicarious trauma. You'll analyze your own stress responses and learn evidence-informed strategies to manage the fatigue of the job, ensuring you can protect your own mental health while leading others.
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We'll close the day by putting these frameworks into direct action. You'll practice the exact language and trauma-informed communication needed to support a struggling team member. We'll outline how to manage workplace accommodations, navigate critical incidents on the floor, and confidently determine when and how to bridge a staff member to professional care.
Please note
For prevention purposes, this course includes content on suicide awareness. Verbal trigger warnings are provided prior to discussing this material to ensure a safe, supportive learning environment for everyone.
Reduces stigma in a sector where burnout is often treated as routine rather than addressed
Recognizes early warning signs in your care staff using the Mental Health Continuum, before strain affects the residents they support
Prepares you to support a struggling team member through chronic understaffing and the emotional weight of long-term care work
Atelier Mental Health Literacy + Facilitation delivers The Working Mind as parallel programmes - one designed specifically for managers and one for employees - because what each group needs from this training is genuinely different.
When both cohorts complete their respective streams, they return to the same workplace with a shared language and shared frameworks for mental health. That shared foundation is what builds psychological safety - and psychological safety is what changes workplace culture.