Professional Development Workshops

We all aspire to work with children through an anti-bias lens, but what does that mean in our day-to-day approaches with kids? In this workshop, each of us will look at our own social identities such as race, gender and sexuality and how these may interact to create systems of advantage or disadvantage. We will also consider how the combination of identity and our own biases affects our roles in communities of care. Finally we will highlight practical best anti-bias practices that foster a culture of safety and inclusivity.

A disconnect often exists between immigrant families and educators. In addition, existing educational practices are frequently ineffective at bridging this divide. This leaves both immigrant families and educators who serve them feeling discouraged and ineffective. The results can be particularly harmful to immigrant students, especially given the barriers they face. In this workshop, we will explore foundational concepts to help educators better understand the experiences of immigrant families and gain practical skills to create impactful partnerships.

Although we know that effective consultation with parents can maximize positive outcomes for children in therapy, parent involvement often does not extend beyond the intake session and brief periodic check-ins. Effective parent consultation can help parents better understand why therapy is beneficial for their children and how interventions are purposeful. In addition, these consultations can provide parents support and hope, both of which help prevent early termination. Finally, therapists are uniquely situated to assess parents’ beliefs and skills, and offer alternative perspectives and strategies when needed. This training series will help you feel more confident about how to approach consultation with parents. You will gain strategies to effectively address a wide variety of challenges when helping parents understand how their day to day interactions can support children reach specific goals and how to assess their child’s progress toward therapeutic goals. You will also gain tools to assess parent behaviors or to provide alternatives when needed.

Over half of working parents are experiencing burnout while rates of child and teen mental health problems are soaring. What can parents do that will really help protect their kids’ mental health? Make home a safe place. A really safe place. Parents might think, “What? Of course our home is a safe place.” Think again. The good news is that the skills parents need to manage the anxiety of work, home, and the world are the same. Gain skills to recognize and reduce chronic threat physiology in the families you serve and yourself.

Almost everyone creates interpretations about what we observe. The challenge is to be able to distinguish between the facts from the stories that we make up about those facts. We may experience strong emotions based on those stories and trigger undue stress and uncertainty in our colleagues and even the children we serve, whether we recognize it or not. Gain skills in recognizing our stories as well as the impact of “triangulation” and apply effective communication to build trust and improve team functioning.

While school refusal is often viewed as misbehavior, in most cases students are simply too anxious to enter the school environment. Gain skills to help parents recognize the ways their own emotions affect their child’s recovery or escalation and provide approaches that encourage confidence and compassion. You will also be able to support parents to partner effectively with their school to address this complex challenge.

Parenting education and support is more than simply listening and exposing parents to information and skills. This workshop is designed for all family support professionals, from parent advocates to home visitors to school social workers and psychologists, who want to strengthen their capacity to positively influence parents from all walks of life. After this training, you will be able to assess parent commitment and intentions, develop a meaningful, realistic and productive "contract" with parents, recognize effects of trauma on parents’ capacity to serve as their child’s “calm center,” as well as model and teach effective communication skills that make a real difference in strengthening relationships.

Young children use a variety of strategies to express themselves and get their needs met. Parents sometimes reinforce challenging behaviors without realizing they are doing so. Early childhood educators can fall into the same trap from time to time. You’ll be able to recognize myths that keep parents, and even professionals, repeating the same approaches that don’t work and often actually increase misbehavior. You’ll also gain effective, evidence-based strategies that increase child cooperation that you can share with parents.

Parenting education and support professionals sometimes focus on parent deficits without carefully engaging parents in reflection about their own goals and values. This workshop will help you strengthen your listening skills to better focus on the client’s agenda, accept your clients pace of self-development, recognize the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences and apply effective strategies to strengthen your client’s skills.

Goal attainment scaling is an established technology that has been forgotten by many human services organizations but has much to recommend it when incorporated into a system of family assessment and documentation in strengths, needs, goals, and feedback. You will be able to apply a framework that helps both staff and families to recognize key elements of family functioning and narrow down complicated family circumstances to specific, manageable areas of concern. The families you serve will gain confidence in their ability to achieve goals and at each step take more responsibility in making them happen.

High conflict co-parents engage in recurrent litigation that strains the court system, exacerbates their conflict and likely causes undue stress to children already struggling with family changes. The purpose of this training is to provide insights and tools that family support professionals may apply to these challenging cases to reduce high conflict co-parents’ use of the court system as a means to address personal struggles and to help co-parents develop productive goals.

All human services professionals benefit from opportunities to reflect on how our own childhoods, our ways of responding to emotions, and our communication styles influence our relationships with the children and families we serve. Participants in this workshop will have an opportunity to view their provider-parent relationships through a “Circle of Security” lens, recognize influences from your childhood on your professional practice, and improve key communication skills.

Children’s reactions to parental divorce are related to many factors including their stage of development, parents’ ability to focus on child’s needs and feelings, child’s temperament and resilience as well as child’s and parents’ pre- and post-separation psychosocial functioning. At a time when the child’s needs are likely to increase, parents are typically less emotionally available and less able to effectively address the child’s needs. At a time when the child’s needs are likely to increase, parents are typically less emotionally available and less able to effectively address the child’s needs. The separation itself is usually the culmination of other family stressors to which the child has been exposed.