Our Training Center
The Center for Family Based Training is dedicated to training individuals, groups, and agencies in the principles and practices of a strength-focused, evidence-informed, ecosystemic approach to treating youth and their families. Although our training programs focus on youth receiving services across the continuum of care, we specialize in training professionals working with complex high-risk youth and their families.
We provide a diverse range of training programs, workshops, and seminars designed to empower clinicians and supervisors with essential skills for assessing and effectively addressing family dynamics, communication challenges, and relational conflicts. Our training resources encompass intensive one-year to three-year programs, as well as on-demand and live-streamed continuing education activities. We also engage in ongoing collaboration with behavioral health agencies, hospitals, and schools to offer CE activities, case consultation, supervision, and program development.
The teaching faculty at the Center for Family Based Training are seasoned family therapists with extensive experience in community-based environments. They possess firsthand knowledge of the challenges therapists encounter in their practice. Dr. Wayne Jones, the founder of the Center, along with three senior faculty members, began their careers as family therapists and trainers at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center (PCGC), internationally recognized for its innovative systemic approach to treating children and adolescents developed by Dr. Salvador Minuchin. Additionally, five of our faculty members have worked in Pennsylvania’s or North Carolina’s intensive in-home program serving as front-line therapists and as clinical supervisors.
The Center for Family Based Training reflects the enthusiastic, creative, and engaging teaching style for which PCGC’s family therapy training center was renowned. This reputation has established it as a leader in exceptional family therapy training. The faculty are recognized for their ability to deliver clinical teaching that is both comprehensible and impactful, presenting complex concepts in an accessible manner.
Our training is grounded in the empirically-supported treatment approach known as EcoSystemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT), which draws inspiration from Salvador Minuchin’s Structural Model of Family Therapy developed at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center in the early 1970s. ESFT posits that a child’s functioning is best understood and addressed within the framework of family and community relationships.
Our Training Programs
The Center for Family Based Training offers a wide range of training opportunities, from single one-time continuing education workshops and online webinars to comprehensive year-long intensive training programs designed for certification in ESFT. All training activities are grounded in the best available clinical and empirical evidence.
We are an approved sponsor of continuing education (CE) programs for psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and professional counselors.
Live-Streamed Workshops. We sponsor CE workshops each year as part of our multi-year intensive training programs for in-home family-based programs. With pre-registration, these CE activities are open to the public. The Center for Family-Based Training also offers CE activities for the staff of individual agencies though our contracting programs. Read more about our upcoming workshops here.
On-Demand Courses. We currently offer more than thirty on-demand courses. These courses are open to all behavioral health professionals. Online courses can be purchased one at a time or as a customized curated package. For example, the Foundations of ESFT is a curated collection of online courses totaling 24 CE hours. The cost of each course is based on the number of CE hours offered. There is a 20% discount when 20 or more CE hours are purchased. Read more about our online continuing education program here.
Certificate Program in the Foundations of an EcoSystemic Approach. This 33-hour introductory program is designed for behavioral health professionals new to family therapy who are working with youth and their families in the community, whether in a clinical capacity or as a supporting nonclinical team member. It is comprised of self-paced on-demand courses (23 hours) integrated with five 2-hour live-streaming interactive seminars. Participants will learn to recognize how presenting problems are influenced by the youth’s family relationships and broader social context, as well as how to leverage family strengths to help families overcome challenging circumstances.
Training programs Leading to ESFT Certification
The Center for Family Based Training offers three levels of certification in Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT). These include Level 1 – ESFT Practitioner; Level 2 – Advanced ESFT Practitioner, and Level 3 – ESFT Supervisor.
OurLevel 1 Certification Training Program is designed to help participants develop essential skills in ESFT, including conceptualizing problems through a strength-based ecosystemic framework, conducting family assessments, utilizing in-session enactments, and maintaining a therapeutic alliance with all family members. The program requires 60 hours of training, split equally between theoretical foundations and clinical practice, and is designed to be completed within one year.
Trainees learn about the conceptual foundations of ESFT through a combination of on-demand courses and live-stream interactive seminars. Trainees learn skills in applying the model through monthly small group case consultations where participants present and discuss their clinical work through an ecosystemic lens. All participants are required to bring in an ESFT case conceptualization write-up and a videotape of their family session. The faculty reviews their work and trainees receive personalized feedback.
Behavioral health professionals and paraprofessionals who work with families in community-based settings and are new to systemic family therapy approaches may find that training in Level 1 ESFT certification may be sufficient for their current jobs or career direction. For those who are interested in becoming more proficient in ESFT and plan to make family therapy a central part of their practice, then our Level 2 or Level 3 training programs are the next progressive steps after completing Level 1 training.
Multi-Year ESFT Training for State-Wide Intensive In-Home Services
All three levels of ESFT certification are built into our multi-year training for state-wide intensive in-home programs. However, the number of training hours and types of courses required for ESFT certification in these programs are often more extensive than that of our certification training focused on outpatient settings or other community-based programs. This is because of the specialized nature of the clinical work and training requirements shaped by state regulatory bodies. Enrollment in these training programs is restricted to staff employed by the agencies who have annual contracts with CFBT.
The primary goals of ESFT in these programs include reducing the referred child’s symptoms and safety concerns, minimizing the risk of psychiatric hospitalization or out-of-home placement, and enhancing the child’s ability to manage home, school, and peer community demands. The training offered through the Center for Family Based Training builds the clinical skills critical for helping therapists to intervene effectively in the family, addressing parenting practices, intra-familial relationships, and family-community relationships.
In Pennsylvania, the Center is approved to offer ESFT training and consultation to Family-Based Mental Health Services (FBMHS) programs, providing a dual three-year curriculum for supervisors (30 hours per year) and front-line therapists (85 hours per year). This curriculum meets regulatory requirements and includes onboarding for new therapists and advanced training for experienced practitioners. Successful completion of the program and passing the state exam qualifies therapists for Level 2 ESFT certification and certification as an ESFT-FBMHS professional.
Competency in the model is promoted through a combination of live didactics, online webinars, and case consultations. The latter comprises about three quarters of the training experience, where videotaped treatment sessions are reviewed and discussed by faculty in collaboration with their FBMHS colleagues. We believe that this work is best learned through supported practice and feedback involving real clinical situations. Supervision training is comprised of small group supervision-of-supervision, individual consultation, and access to online webinars that provide conceptual foundations.
North Carolina Intensive In-Home (IIH) Training. As with Pennsylvania FBMHS, North Carolina behavioral health agencies contract directly with CFBT annually. ESFT is an approved evidence-based model for intensive in-home services in North Carolina. We provide training that is designed to meet the North Carolina IIH regulatory requirements for both supervisors and for front-line therapists. The center piece of this intensive ESFT training program is individualized agency-specific monthly case consultations with treatment teams.
Agency-Sponsored CE Workshops & Systems Consultation. The Center for Family Based Training regularly contracts with community mental health agencies, prevention programs such as Early Head Start, and behavioral health management organizations (BMCOs) interested in incorporating a family-centered, eco-systemic approach into service delivery. Our faculty collaborate with clinical leaders in these organizations to develop a cost-effective strategy for increasing the capacity of staff to provide high-quality, evidence informed family-based interventions. If you are interested in learning more about this service, contact us.