Foundational helping skills are the provider's competencies needed to build a warm and trustworthy relationship with a client. Examples include effective verbal and non-verbal communication, demonstrating empathy, rapport building, and promoting hope and expectancy of change¹.

These skills have been widely established as an essential and universal prerequisite for the delivery of any effective psychosocial or psychological care¹, and identified as core competencies required for all health workers in the forthcoming World Health Organization (WHO)'s Global Competency Framework for Universal Health Coverage².

Competent use of these skills by providers improves treatment outcomes for people accessing the whole range of health services, from surgery to mental health services^{1, 3}, and use of these skills has been shown to support greater treatment compliance also outside the mental health field – for example, HIV treatment adherence⁴.

The recent global experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that mental health and psychosocial support skills cannot be limited to mental health specialists only. Health systems will be able to better respond to public health emergencies as well as provide superior routine care if all health care providers are competent in foundational helping skills. Yet, in many health training programs, the attention to these skills and their evaluation is limited⁵.

The WHO developed the Ensuring Quality in Psychological Support (EQUIP) project, which aims to strengthen quality in the delivery of psychosocial support and psychological training within the Universal Health Coverage agenda. The EQUIP platform will offer materials for trainers, supervisors, and program managers on competency-based training and assessment⁶. One such resource for trainers is the competency-based Foundational Helping Skills Trainer's Curriculum.

The formative process to develop this training package included a narrative review, identification of empirically supported common factors used across effective interventions⁷, human centered design inputs, and extensive expert consultation, including experts from field sites, programme managers, and academics. Based on these contributions, a range of skills were identified. Examples include verbal and non-verbal communication skills, using culturally and age-appropriate terminology and concepts for distress, confidentiality, normalization of feelings, expression of empathy, promoting hope, and suicide risk assessment. In addition, based on the importance of attitudes in motivating caring behaviours⁸, a module on attitudes toward helping others was included.

The training curriculum is in a modular format, to allow trainers to fit it to the trainees' needs based on brief competency assessments conducted throughout the training programme. The curriculum includes didactics, participatory group activities, and skill remediation techniques, which can be delivered online, face-to-face, or in a combined approach. Role-play based competency assessments⁹ are conducted throughout the training to monitor progress, to determine minimum competency, and to ensure that the trainee does not engage in harmful behaviours (e.g., being dismissive or judgmental, ignoring or minimizing suicide warning signs)⁹.

The EQUIP Foundational Helping Skills Trainer's Curriculum is intended to be a brief course: approximately 20 content hours, with flexibility based on the prior skill level of trainees. It is designed for implementation across a wide variety of government and non-government organization sectors, such as public health, family and community services, education, and law enforcement, with trainees such as professionals and para-professionals without prior training in mental health and psychosocial support skills.

Pilot testing of the training package is currently underway in Uganda, Nepal and Peru, assessing its feasibility, acceptability, and perceived benefit for remote and in-person delivery.

The EQUIP Foundational Helping Skills Trainer's Curriculum aims to meet an indispensable need by ensuring that the growing workforce of health care professionals and non-specialist providers are competent in foundational helping skills. This, alongside other activities, will hopefully lead to improved quality of care and will be one step closer to achieving the goal of a competent health workforce for Universal Health Coverage.

基本帮助技能是提供者与客户建立温暖和值得信赖的关系所需的能力。例子包括有效的口头和非口头交流、表现出同理心、建立融洽的关系，以及促进变革的希望和期望¹。

这些技能已被广泛确立为提供任何有效的社会心理或心理护理的基本和普遍的先决条件¹，并在即将发布的世界卫生组织 (WHO) 全球能力框架中确定为所有卫生工作者所需的核心能力健康保险²。

提供者对这些技能的有效使用可以改善人们获得从手术到心理健康服务^1、3的所有健康服务的治疗结果，并且这些技能的使用已被证明可以在心理健康领域之外支持更大的治疗依从性 -例如，艾滋病毒治疗依从性⁴。

最近的全球 COVID-19 大流行经验表明，心理健康和社会心理支持技能不能仅限于心理健康专家。如果所有卫生保健提供者都具备基本的帮助技能，卫生系统将能够更好地应对突发公共卫生事件并提供卓越的常规护理。然而，在许多健康培训项目中，对这些技能及其评估的关注是有限的⁵。

世卫组织制定了确保心理支持质量 (EQUIP) 项目，旨在提高在全民健康覆盖议程范围内提供社会心理支持和心理培训的质量。EQUIP 平台将为培训师、主管和项目经理提供有关基于能力的培训和评估的材料⁶。培训师的此类资源之一是基于能力的基础帮助技能培训师课程。

开发此培训包的形成过程包括叙述性审查、确定有效干预措施中使用的经验支持的共同因素⁷、以人为本的设计投入，以及广泛的专家咨询，包括来自现场的专家、项目经理和学者。根据这些贡献，确定了一系列技能。例子包括语言和非语言沟通技巧，使用文化和年龄适当的术语和概念来表示痛苦、保密、感觉正常化、表达同理心、促进希望和自杀风险评估。此外，基于态度在激发关怀行为中的重要性⁸，还包括了一个关于帮助他人态度的模块。

培训课程采用模块化格式，使培训师能够根据在整个培训计划中进行的简短能力评估来满足学员的需求。课程包括教学法、参与式小组活动和技能补救技术，可以在线、面对面或以组合方式提供。在整个培训过程中进行基于角色扮演的能力评估⁹以监控进度，确定最低能力，并确保受训者不从事有害行为（例如，轻视或评判、忽视或尽量减少自杀警告信号）⁹。

EQUIP 基础帮助技能培训师的课程旨在成为一个简短的课程：大约 20 个内容小时，根据受训者的先前技能水平灵活调整。它旨在在各种政府和非政府组织部门（例如公共卫生、家庭和社区服务、教育和执法）中实施，受训人员（例如专业人士和准专业人士）未经心理健康和心理健康方面的事先培训社会心理支持技能。

目前正在乌干达、尼泊尔和秘鲁对培训包进行试点测试，评估其可行性、可接受性以及远程和面对面交付的感知益处。

EQUIP 基础帮助技能培训师课程旨在通过确保不断增长的医疗保健专业人员和非专业提供者能够胜任基础帮助技能来满足不可或缺的需求。与其他活动一起，这有望提高护理质量，并将朝着实现全民健康覆盖的合格卫生人力目标迈进一步。