Presenter: Daniel B. Jacobs, Ed.M., M.B.A., Psy.D. is a Core Faculty member at William James College in the School Psychology Department Dr. Jacobs also serves as an adjunct faculty member in WJC’s Clinical Psychology and Organizational Leadership Psychology Departments, and created and teaches courses including The Psychology of Leadership and Followership and Creative Change and Transformative Leadership.
Clinical Expert Series by the Bridge Training Institute
Description: Multi-stressed families are faced with a variety of concerns that make it harder for therapeutic and agency supports to provide service. Helping guide these families forward in positive change directions can be difficult for a variety of reasons. Overwhelmed children and adults have been exposed to pain and loss many times over and often feel that others only see them as their diagnoses or problems. Repeated buffering by the effects of substance abuse concerns, traumatic events, mental health challenges and financial stressors often leave these families in a reactive state of chaos and unprepared to make effective and lasting positive changes. For some of these families these mental health and substance abuse challenges have crossed generations and there is a very low sense of self-efficacy regarding the ability to make positive and impactful changes. The individuals and families are in need of conflict mediation skills and coping strategies, and they greatly benefit from interventions that foster positive cognitive change around seizing opportunities to make a difference.
In this workshop we will explore ways to find the potential for positive change, discovering the“hope and beauty in the chaos” in painful and challenging situations and discuss interventions that engage reluctant or resistant clients to address long-standing problems. Drawing on theoretical concepts of Appreciative Inquiry, Collaborative, Solution-Focused and Narrative therapies, this workshop is designed to help participants learn practical interventions that foster possibilities, collaboration and accountability in work with multi-stressed families. Issues of diversity, difference, gender, social class and other key factors will be considered in the context of fostering empowerment in the family unit. Emphasis will be given to proactive and strength-based approaches to help family members break out of the “stuck loop” that can be so common. We will also explore self-care and coping strategies designed to help support the clinicians engaged in this important and challenging work.
This workshop will include a mix of lecture, case method, multi-media presentation and discussion, and is designed to be informative, interactive, and even fun (which obviously helps when you address such serious issues). Hope you can come and join us for the exploration of these important issues.
Following this training the participants will be able to:
- Identify “opportunity windows” for best-fit, strength-based interventions when working with multi-stressed families.
- Engage reluctant families in positive change efforts with clinicians and find ways to foster collaborative relationships with agency supports.
- Conduct interventions that respect and reflect the specific narrative-histories and perceptions of the individuals and families being seen.
- Become familiar with helpful collaborative assessments, therapy contracts and other therapeutic documents that reflect a family-centered approach designed to address transgenerational mental health and substance abuse concerns.
- Employ self-care strategies to decrease risk of compassion fatigue, burnout and/or vicarious traumatization response patterns that can develop in the face of exposure to pressure, challenge and crisis.
Registration fee: $159 per training (includes 6 CEUs)
Register for any combination of 3 trainings are receive $50 off the total cost.
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