December 2025: Family Based Youth Suicide Prevention: Risk Assessment & Safety Planning

A Live, Interactive Webconference

Cost: This training is free but open only to supervisors and behavioral health professionals working in agencies contracted with CFBT

Friday, December 5, 2025, FBMHS Training Groups via Live Interactive Zoom
8:25am-12:40pm

How often do adolescents present in therapy with suicide ideation? Or unexpectedly reveal these thoughts during a session? When do we tell caregivers? How do we tell caregivers? Do we send adolescents to the hospital or create a safety network to keep them at home? What level of risk are we comfortable managing in our practice? Learning some practical, state of the art, empirically supported clinical strategies to manage a youth suicide crisis can improve clinical decision making and ethical practice.

This workshop provides an introduction to state of the art, empirically supported family based suicide risk management practices to help therapists and clinical staff manage suicide concerns when they arise. First, we discuss trauma informed care, adolescent and family development and the national concern about adolescent suicide risk. Then we teach a family-centered care approach to risk assessment and safety planning. Lecture, discussion, and experiential exercises are used throughout the workshop.

Objectives

At the completion of the workshop participants should be able to:

List the important aspects of a risk assessment.
Discuss how to include caregivers in assessment and when to meet with youth alone.
Describe the decision making process of what level of care is needed to match the level of risk.
Explain importance of a family generated safety plan.

This is an intermediate level course. The target audience is behavioral health professionals working within Pennsylvania’s Family Based program. This is a live synchronous distance learning activity conducted in real time, allowing for simultaneous participation of participants and instructors from different locations.

Agenda

8:25am-9:30am: Introduction
9:30am-10:30am: Understanding Suicide Risk
10:30am-10:45am: Break
10:45am-11:30am: Understanding suicide risk continued
11:30am-12:40pm: Safety Planning from a Family Perspective

About the Trainer

Guy Diamond, PhD is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and formerly served as Associate Professor at Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions, where he retired in 2023. During his tenure at Drexel, he was the founding Director of the Center for Family Intervention Science (CFIS), leading pioneering research in family-based mental health treatments and suicide prevention. Dr. Diamond has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and has been awarded or contributed to over $30 million in research funding. His work has significantly advanced the development and dissemination of evidence-based interventions aimed at improving family dynamics and reducing suicide risk across diverse communities. On the prevention front, Dr. Diamond developed a comprehensive program for suicide prevention training, screening, and triage designed for implementation in non-behavioral health settings such as primary care and educational institutions. In the realm of treatment, he is best known for his leadership in the development and empirical validation of Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT), a transdiagnostic model focused on repairing ruptures in family attachment to support youth experiencing depression and suicidal ideation. ABFT has been successfully adapted for children, adolescents, LGBTQ+ populations, and young adults, and is now practiced in clinical settings worldwide. Currently, Dr. Diamond serves as President of the ABFT International Training Institute, which promotes global dissemination and training in the ABFT model. In recognition of his contributions to the field, he was honored as the 2025 Family Psychologist of the Year by the American Psychological Association’s Division 43.

Frequently Asked Questions
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October 2025: Constructing Effective Enactments

A Live, Interactive Webconference

Cost: This training is free but open only to supervisors and behavioral health professionals working in agencies contracted with CFBT

Friday, October 10, 2025, FBMHS Training Groups via Live Interactive Zoom
8:25am-12:40pm

Thursday, October 30, 2025, NC IIH ESFT Training Groups via Live Interactive Zoom
8:25am-12:40pm

Children and adolescents with severe emotional and behavioral issues and their families often become entrenched in negative interactional patterns that perpetuate and exacerbate high-risk behavior. Enactment, the cornerstone of the ESFT approach, is a core assessment and treatment method utilized in most current evidence-based child and adolescent focused family therapies (e.g., ABFT, MDFT, BSSFT). Enactments refer to family members being encouraged to interact and problem-solving directly with one another in session, with the therapist in a noncentral, facilitative role.

This workshop introduces the newly released Family Therapy Enactment Scale, (FTES) a tool that can be used to guide therapists and supervisors in the effective use of enactments. There are two versions, one focused on using enactments to assess family patterns, and the other focused on changing family patterns. This is an interactive training where participants will have an opportunity to use the scales to evaluate and discuss videotaped enactments. This workshop shows how assessment enactments can be used to bring negative interactional patterns into the room for direct observation and discussion, helping to shift families from a behavioral view of problems to one that is relational. Focus is also given to how change enactments can be used to disrupt and shift negative interactional patterns to more functional ones.

Objectives

As a result of attending this training, participants will be able to:

Explain the nature of enactments and when to use them
Describe the FTES scales and how to use them to become more skilled in using enactments.
Describe how to use assessment enactments to shift families to a relational frame of problems and solutions
Describe how to use change enactments to disrupt and shift negative interactional patterns to more functional ones.

Agenda

8:25am-10:30am: Focus on Objectives 1-2
10:30am-10:40am: Break
10:40am-12:40pm: Focus on Objectives 3-4

June 2025: Engaging Caregivers in Family Treatment

June 26, 2025, Venango County via Zoom Webconference
8:25am-10:30am, 10:40am-12:35pm

In family treatment approaches, such as ESFT, efforts to help children with serious emotional problems mostly flow through the caregivers. Therefore, a critical task in the first stage of treatment is engaging caregivers and building a strong therapeutic alliance. Even in the best of times, this can be challenging for therapists working with disadvantaged, multi-stressed families, where caregivers often have a history of traumatic stress. Many caregivers of the children treated in community-based services are distrusting of mental health professionals and are reluctant to participate or engage in family sessions. They tend to see problems and solutions behaviorally, existing separately from themselves and family relationships. Common barriers to caregiver participation and engagement are identified and explored within the social context of the family, community, and referring agencies. The Stages of Change model is introduced to guide therapists’ conceptualization and approach to addressing caregiver treatment-hesitancy. Videos are utilized to demonstrates how to provide emotional support to strengthening trust and move caregivers toward greater engagement in family treatment and a relational focus.

Objectives

As a result of participating in this workshop, participants will be able to:

Explain the rationale for family therapy and the focus on caregivers in ESFT.
Recognize the difference between caregiver involvement and caregiver engagement.
Identify the most common reasons caregivers are reluctant to participate and fully engage in family treatment
Describe six strategies for engaging caregivers in treatment.

Frequently Asked Questions
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An Introduction to Suicide Assessment

June 4, 2025, Catholic Charities, Harrisburg via Zoom Webconference
8:25am-10:30am, 10:40am-12:35pm

Assessing suicidal behaviors is one of the most challenging scenarios facing mental health clinicians with both patient death and serious injury as potential adverse outcomes. Challenges include identifying both chronic and acute risks for suicide and interviewing patients in an empathetic and organized manner that facilitates sharing painful or sensitive information. Stress is often high for both patient and clinician and can make accurate assessment difficult. This seminar will review evidence-based practices developed by leading emergency psychiatrists and suicide researchers and present an organized strategy for comprehensive suicide assessment giving clinicians the best chance to identify suicidal risks and accurately interview patients so that providers can make accurate treatment decisions. This seminar will make use of lecture of theoretical content and role play of practical scenarios to facilitate learning.

Objectives

As a result of participating in this workshop, attendees will be able to:

1. Identify chronic and acute risk factors for suicide.

2. Conduct a structured interview of suicidal events.

3. Incorporate behavioral approaches to facilitate discussion of suicidal topics.

4. Construct a basic safety plan to facilitate treatment planning.

About The Trainer

Kevin Hoffman is a psychiatrist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After completing a combined MD, PhD program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, NY, he completed a residency in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently completing a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and will join Stanford University’s Department of Psychiatry this summer as a child psychiatrist primarily working in the Immune Behavioral Health Clinic at Stanford.

Frequently Asked Questions
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Graduate Booster: Navigating Common Traps of Trauma-Informed Care in Eco-Systemic Structural Family Therapy

A Live, Interactive Webconference

Cost: This training is free but open only to Family Based Mental Health therapists working in agencies contracted with CFBT

Friday, March 21, 2025 via Live Interactive Zoom
8:30am-12:30pm

This workshop counts toward required annual training hours in Family Based Mental Health Services but is not currently available for CE credit.

This training is designed to equip family therapists with the skills and knowledge necessary to navigate the common traps that arise when integrating trauma-informed care within Eco-Systemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT). By balancing trauma awareness with systemic interventions, participants will learn to avoid the over-individualization of trauma responses and maintain a focus on relational dynamics. Through a blend of lecture, case study analysis, and interactive discussion, therapists will leave with practical tools to foster family healing, strengthen relational bonds, and avoid therapeutic immobilization. This training emphasizes action-oriented, strengths-based interventions that leverage family dynamics as a powerful resource for trauma recovery.

Objectives

As a result of attending this training, participants will be able to:

Describe three principles of systemic work and trauma work that can conflict.
Describe three common traps that emerge when integrating trauma-informed care (TIC) within Eco-Systemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT).
Identify three strategies for maintaining a balanced approach that upholds both systemic integrity and trauma-informed principles, avoiding therapeutic immobilization.

This is an intermediate level course. The target audience is behavioral health professionals working within in-home behavioral health programs. This is a live synchronous distance learning activity conducted in real time, allowing for simultaneous participation of participants and instructors from different locations.

Visit our Policies & FAQs on Live, Interactive Webconferences for additional information regarding CFBT live interactive workshops, accommodations for disabilities, reporting problems with the training, instructions for registering for a training, etc.