Treating Youth Living In Under-Organized Families

A Live, Interactive Webconference
Thursday, June 15, 2023, via Zoom Interactive Webconference
8:25am-12:35pm

Life in the home for children living in under-organized families is marked by inconsistency and chaos. Caregivers are often distracted, disengaged, and absent from the home, leaving children at high risk for emotional neglect, and sometimes abuse. The nature of emotional neglect and emotional detachment are described in detail, as well as its emotional and behavioral impacts. Clips from films and family sessions are used to highlight the internal experience of emotionally neglected youth and how to best support them in engaging in an emotionally focused therapeutic process.

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

Recognize the characteristics of under-organization in families
Describe the link between family under-organization, emotional neglect, and children’s presenting problems.
Identify the most common survival skills youth develop as a result of living in under-organized families.
Describe strategies for emotionally engaging distrustful, detached youth in treatment.

Agenda

8:25am-10:30am: Focus on Objectives 1 & 2
10:30am-10:40am: Break
10:40am-12:35pm: Focus on Objectives 3 & 4

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

Frequently Asked Questions
Visit our FBMHS 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.

Graduate Booster: Reshaping the Caregivers Relational Maps

A Live, Interactive Webconference

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

Thursday, 3/23/23, All-Site Graduate Training via Live Interactive Zoom
8:25am-12:35pm
Training Hours: 4.0

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

Towards the goal of reducing risk and improving youth functioning, ESFT therapists focus on strengthening the caregiver-child relationship, and work through the caregiver. This is often challenging. Despite therapists’ efforts, when the youth is dysregulated and needs their caregivers to be calm and supportive, caregivers often fall into old insecurities and defensive postures, responding to the child in a way that exacerbates and maintains presenting symptoms. This workshop introduces Dr. Dan Siegel’s theory of Interpersonal Neurobiology as one way to conceptualize and address this negative pattern.Dr. Siegel’s ideas remind us that while children and parents are wired neurobiologically toward patterned ways of relating given their experiences, neurobiology can be re-shaped by more functional interpersonal interactions. This workshop focuses on the caregiver portion of the Negative Interactional Pattern, bringing more clarity to how neurobiology shapes the caregivers’ relational maps with both their children, other caregivers, and the therapists. Case studies and videotaped treatment sessions are used to demonstrate how to use enactments to reshape the caregivers’ relational maps and create more functional parent-child relationships.

Objectives

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

Describe Dr. Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology framework for understanding the mind in the context of relationships.
Use an interpersonal neurobiology perspective to conceptualize the caregiver’s reactivity to the child in the NIP.
Identify opportunities in family sessions to use enactments to help caregivers develop more openness to the relationship with their children.

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-10:30am: Focus on Objectives 1 & 2
10:30am-10:40am: Break
10:40am-12:35pm: Focus on Objectives 3 & 4

Frequently Asked Questions
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.

Skills for Working with Resistant Clients

A Live, Interactive Webconference
Wednesday, March 8, 2023, via Zoom Interactive Webconference
8:25am-12:35pm

Resistance and defensiveness can be a normal part of the treatment process for behavioral health providers working in the community. Regardless of experience level, clients who present as resistant, defensive, or disengaged can be challenging. In this workshop, common presentations of resistance are identified, as well as the ways each can impact treatment. A framework is provided for understanding what gives rise to client resistance, identifying contextual factors in the therapeutic relationship, as well as what the client brings via their relational history and personality style. This workshop provides approaches and techniques behavioral health providers can use to overcome resistance, repair ruptured alliances, and foster engagement with distrustful clients. Attendees will learn about common defense mechanisms and ways to skillfully deal with them in treatment using evidence-informed, best practice guidelines drawn from Person-Centered Care and Motivational Interviewing. Specific case examples and illustrations will be used to highlight concepts and principles

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

Identify three common types of defense mechanisms and give an example of how each can show up and interfere with individual and family therapy.
Identify three or more common sources of resistance and defensiveness in individual and family therapy.
Describe applications of Person-Centered Care to building rapport and repairing therapeutic ruptures
Describe applications of Motivational Interviewing to engagement and buy in, as well as resistance/non-engagement

Agenda

8:25am-10:30am: Focus on Objectives 1 & 2
10:30am-10:40am: Break
10:40am-12:35pm: Focus on Objectives 3 & 4

About The Trainer
Hailey Shafir is a licensed clinical mental health counselor, a licensed addiction specialist, and a board-approved clinical supervisor for newly licensed mental health and addiction counselors. She has more than a decade of experience providing counseling, developing programs for at-risk youth, people struggling with addictions, and providing training and supervision for clinicians. She is the owner of several businesses including Keep Counsel, Plan-it Therapy, IndyWind, and Therapy Cred. Hailey is also a content writer and medical peer reviewer for Addictions.com, the National Drug Helpline, Choosing Therapy, Rehab Adviser, Searchlight, Social Pro Now, and other sites, and has worked to develop online recovery apps and programs for people struggling with addictions and impulse control disorders.

Facilitating the Parent-Child Relationship
In Under-Organized Families

Thursday, June 8, 2023, North Carolina Training Groups via Live Interactive Zoom Webconference
Friday, June 9, 2023, North Carolina Training Groups via Live Interactive Zoom Webconference
8:25am-12:35pm

This workshop provides an eco-systemic framework for understanding and treating troubled parent-child relationships in under-organized families. Life in the under-organized home for children and their caregivers is marked by inconsistency, chaos, and low support. Caregivers are often “leaning out” of the parenting role, appearing distracted and disengaged from household management and day-to-day parenting. Their children have often stopped listening to them, which is usually the caregivers’ main presenting complaint. Relationships between caregivers and between caregivers and their children can be fragile and badly bruised. Adding to the complexity these families are often involved with multiple service providers, including child protective services. Engagement of the caregivers is key to stabilizing the under-organized family and strengthening their relationships with their children. This workshop provides treatment guidelines focused on the initial steps of intervention, such as engaging these caregivers in family treatment, addressing their ambivalence about being a parent, strengthening their executive functioning, and orienting them toward building more functional relationships with their children. Common traps are identified that therapists need to avoid when working with these caregivers and their families.

This is a live synchronous distance learning activity conducted in real time, allowing for simultaneous participation of participants and instructors from different locations.

Objectives:

As a result of attending this continuing education activity, participants will be able to:

Recognize the characteristics of under-organization in families and the caregiving patterns that create and maintain it.
Describe strategies for emotionally engaging distrustful, detached caregivers in treatment.
Describe strategies for addressing caregiver ambivalence about being a parent and moving them toward “leaning into” their relationship with their children.
Identify the most common mistakes professionals make when working with under-organized families and how to avoid them.

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

Frequently Asked Questions
Visit our Policies & FAQs for additional information regarding the CFBT online learning center, accommodations for disabilities, reporting problems with the course, instructions for viewing webinars, etc.

How Subsystem Work Can Enhance Family Sessions:
Applications of Attachment-Based Family Therapy

A Live, Interactive Webconference

Friday, 5/12/23, All Training Groups via Live Interactive Zoom
8:25am-1:05pm

In families treated in intensive, in-home services, attachment ruptures (i.e. breakages of trust) between youth and their caregivers are a major component of the clinical picture. As in ESFT, the central premise of Attachment Based Family Therapy (ABFT), is to revive an attachment-promoting family environment and to improve a young persons’ sense of felt security in their relationship with their caregiver(s) so that caregivers can serve as a source of support to help young people cope with the emotional challenges they are facing. ABFT is an evidence-based model designed for treating youth with depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Understanding that multi-stressed families traditionally terminate treatment early, ABFT intentionally focuses on engaging both the caregivers and the youth to buffer against premature termination. In this model, therapists meet with teens and caregivers separately, as well together in joint family sessions. This workshop describes strategies used in the subsystem work of AFBT that can be effectively applied to the families treated in intensive, in-home services.

This workshop will first review the theoretical and empirical support informing ABFT. Next, a brief overview of the five tasks will occur to give participants an understanding of the overall model. The five tasks of ABFT are 1) The Relational Reframe; 2) Adolescent Alliance; 3) Parent Alliance; 4) Repairing Attachment; and 5) Promoting Autonomy. This workshop will then focus on Task 2 and Task 3, with the goal of teaching participants strategies of how to maximize the use of subsystem work to inform joint family sessions. In ABFT, the subsystem work is crucial to prepare and motivate families to repair the parent-child relationships. The workshop will include lecture, small-group and large group discussions, video demonstration, and role-play to facilitate learning.

Objectives

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

Describe the basics of ABFT and how, like ESFT, it organizes therapy around interpersonal growth rather than behavioral management.
Explain how subsystem work, as implemented in ABFT, informs joint family sessions.
Discuss how therapists utilizing subsystem sessions can motivate youth to want to improve their relationships with their caregivers.
Discuss how therapists utilizing subsystem sessions can motivate caregivers to want to be different with their youth.

Agenda

8:25am-10:30am: Focus on Objectives 1 & 2
10:30am-10:40am: Break
10:40am-1:05pm: Focus on Objectives 3 & 4

Allie King, PhD, is an assistant clinical professor in the Couple and Family Therapy Department at Drexel University. Dr. King is also the Training Director at the Attachment Based Family Therapy Training Program. Dr. King oversees the training and supervision of study therapists within the clinical trial research studies for ABFT. She leads trainings and supervision groups at the ABFT Training Program.

Dr. King received her PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy from Virginia Tech. Her research interests focus on adaptations of ABFT, person-of-the-therapist training, training of marriage and family therapists and adolescent eating disorders. She is an American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) supervisor candidate.