Admissions and Enrolment

Begin Today

We’d love to see you in attendance during our next round of course offerings, and invite you to start the registration process. We recommend you contact us for an appointment to come in and have a chat, so you can ask any questions you might have, get a better idea of our courses and community feel before you make a commitment.

Please scroll down for all of the Courses that are available.... 

Courses Available

Learn With Us

When you decide to work with Skills for Life, you will be getting so much more out of your learning experience. Our facilitators are experienced mental health professionals and are passionate about bringing the best out of our students.  Check out some of the amazing opportunities we provide below.

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Most of our courses comprise of 6, 8 or 10 sessions, held weekly.  

Please talk to us regarding various possible funding options 

Understanding and Managing Anxiety

eight  x 2 hour session course

This course provides an understanding of symptoms of anxiety and panic and their effects, as well as exploring treatments and self management options. We’ll define anxiety and panic and its impact on the mind and body. We’ll explore how lifestyles can affect anxiety, how to change anxious thinking cycles and how to relax more effectively.

Understanding and Managing Stress

eight  x 1 hour session course

This course provides an understanding of symptoms of stress and its effects. We’ll define stress and its impact on the mind and body.  You will identify your stress profile and consider stress management plans. We will explore unhelpful thinking and behaviours that create or maintain the experience of stress as well as other barriers to coping.  

Mind Fullness to Mindfulness

eight  x 1 1/2 hour session course

Being mindful means to bring your full attention to your present experience in an accepting, non-judgemental way.
In this course we’ll explore what mindfulness is, how to practise mindfulness quickly and easily so you can integrate a new way of being into your everyday life. This can help you to cope with your challenging emotions, managing stress, and increasing your general sense of wellbeing in a rich variety of different ways.

Understanding and Managing Depression

eight  x 2 hour session course

Depression is one of the most common mental health issues. In this course, we’ll discuss what it is and its wide ranging impact on all aspects of life. We’ll explore all kinds of skills including lifestyle strategies to improve mood and gain a sense of control with cognitive and behaviour techniques.

Rethink for Seniors

ten  x 2 hour session course

This course is designed for people of 65 years young and over. The course focuses on increasing resilience levels to enable a person to traverse the changes associated with the autumn years of life. 

We'll look at managing mental health as well as improving wellbeing and quality of life. We will cover a variety of topics that give us tools to help with managing our thoughts, developing more positive behaviours, coping with stress and worry, sleep and difficult emotions.

Black Dog Training

 eight x 1 hour session course for 14 - 17 year old's

This course is specifically for young people that experience depression. During this course we’ll look together at what it means to be depressed and how to cope with specific symptoms. Understanding what depression is and how it can affect our minds and behaviours is key to learning how to have better control on its effects. We will help you to identify and change your unhelpful thinking and behaviours which will help you to fight the lows.

Fighting 'IT'

eight x 1 hour session course for 14 - 17 year old's

This course is specifically for young people that experience anxiety. During this course we’ll look together at what anxiety is and how it affects us; how it feels, what we are thinking and what we do. We will explore all the different situations that bring anxious feelings and the possible reasons for that. We will learn different ways to feel relaxed-the opposite to feeling anxious. Helping us to understand all about anxiety teaches us how to be the boss of ‘it’!

Working It Out

designed for individuals claiming an unemployment or medical benefit via work and income 

This course is specifically for people that are unemployed due to wellbeing issues.  We explore how to deal with destructive negative thinking and behaviours and look at understanding different emotions and how to manage these.  The course also explores our relationships with self, others and the world. There are specific sessions that cover assertiveness, dealing with conflict and criticism and problem solving.   

This course is offered in venues in Whangarei, Dargaville, Kerikeri, Kaikohe and Kaitaia 

Facilitated by Skills for Life and is fully funded by Work and Income.  The course is 6 weeks long  and currently the sessions run on two mornings each week, in each area, from 9.30am -12.30pm 

Please be aware that there is no employment obligation following the course as everyone is to work at their own pace with regards to employment readiness but it is designed to help a person learn to manage their mental health and move on in life in whatever way that is for the individual.

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How to be Bold

eight x 2 hour session course

In this course we will explore how to increase your self- esteem and confidence, improve your sense of achievement and be more hopeful about future opportunities.

You will discover how a lack of self-compassion can decrease your confidence. You will learn self-compassion practices to help you be more compassionate towards yourself and to promote personal recovery. You don't need previous knowledge on this subject, but may need to be willing to participate and share your experiences. 

New Beginnings and Navigating Changes

eight x 1.5 hour session course

This course is designed for new mothers experiencing postnatal distress (PND). Having a new baby is a hugely life changing experience, particularly your first.  PND is a common mental health issue and affects around one in five mothers and one in six fathers.  It is acknowledged that new parents and parents to be are left woefully short of support and are bombarded with information on what they 'should and should not be doing'.

It offers new mothers experiencing PND a safe, non-judgemental space to share the realities of motherhood with other mums.  We will explore a number of cognitive behaviour therapy skills to manage your mood and increase your self-confidence as well as build an understanding of your experience of PND.  Please note that babies will be welcome to sessions.

Gaining Balance

Ten x 1.5 hour session course

This course is designed for people that experience Bipolar Disorder and can be attended in conjunction with medication treatment. The course involves learning how to:

• Monitor and understand mood symptoms

• Identify early warning signs for episodes

• Deal with stressful events that can trigger episodes

• This course will teach you cognitive behaviour techniques and strategies to help you manage both episodes of depression and mania.

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Making Connections / Whakatakoto Whaainga
Virtually led online courses for rangatahi/youth from 12-24 years old

These courses are designed for rangatahi / youth to help enhance and maintain resilience and psychological wellbeing by building their social and emotional skills aimed specifically at young people that are experiencing anxiety or low mood.  Theses courses, as with most of our courses, are designed around the use of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy skills (CBT). These skills can help the young person understand how thoughts and emotions affect behaviour and how changing their thoughts and emotions can change this behaviour and the way they feel.  Each of the three courses are appropriately designed to appeal to the stated age group. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and stay-at-home orders continue, many parents may notice changes in a young persons mood, health habits, motivation and relationship with others. It can be stressful adjusting to this new experience and tolerating the uncertainty of this time. If young person in your family are experiencing significant mood or behavior changes related to COVID-19, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) can help!

1. Think Good, Feel Good 

six x 1 hour session course for 12 - 14 year old's

This course aims to help young people understand how thoughts and emotions affect behaviour and how changing their thoughts and emotions can change this behaviour and the way they feel. The sessions include a mixture of fun games, discussion and videos. Young people are encouraged to interact, share experiences (where possible) and work in a way that normalises their experiences and increases social skills and resilience. 

2. Think Twice

six x 1 hour session course for 15 - 17 year old's

This course provides support for Young people using brief, easy-to-follow sessions, complete with skills-building activities, that convey that there is hope for change, and that both depression and anxiety are treatable.  The course looks at the connections between our thoughts feelings and behaviours and will demonstrate that everyone is accountable for their actions and have the power to change their pattern of thinking. 

3. G.R.I.T

six x 1 hour session course for 18 - 24 year old's

This course is specifically for young adults.  It focuses on the symptoms of both anxiety and depression, explores how to deal with destructive negative thinking and behaviours and looks at understanding different emotions and how to manage these.  The course also explores our relationships with self, others and the world. Building skills to develop Guts, Resilience, Initiative and Tenacity.

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Course Design 

Skills for Life offer a course and workshop design service. This service will enable any business, workplace or educational facility to provide wellbeing training in order to target any specific identified needs

For more information on services offered at

Skills for Life, please contact us.