Workshops and Schedule
Please note all workshops and times are subject to change
Thursday Workshops – Block A – 2 contact hours
Positive Psychology: Building positive self-identity for our clients and ourselves
Barbara Drotos, LICSW
Positive psychology reaches far beyond simply having a positive
outlook on life. Identifying character strengths and understanding PERMA
is transformative for people who incorporate these practices into their
lives. When we bring the concepts of positive psychology into our
clinical work with individuals and families, it is equally as important
to allow it to permeate through our own lives. It can have a powerful
influence on the everyday lives of clients who have experienced trauma,
loss, or significant change. It can be transformative in the lives of
individuals who are neurotypical as well as those who have an acquired
brain injury, developmental disability and/or mental health challenges.
Join us in this enlightening, interactive workshop to learn more about
positive psychology and the impact is can have on your life and the
lives of others.
Art and Mindfulness: Sensory Based Art Interventions for Social Workers
Barbara Davis, MFA, MSW, LCSW
Trauma research has taught us that talking is often not enough and we
need to integrate body based and other non-verbal interventions into
our practice. This workshop brings together the fields of Mindfulness,
Art Therapy and Social Work Practice and offers participants a range of
body and art-based interventions that compliment any talk therapy
practice. Participants will learn the rationale for such an integrated
approach and how such an approach supports our work as talk therapists,
and the healing process for our clients. Interventions taught will be
appropriate for a range of clients struggling with anxiety, depression,
loss and trauma and focused on feelings identification and expression,
self-awareness and acceptance, increased sensory awareness and
integration. This workshop will be both didactic and experiential as
participants will be asked to engage in the mindfulness and art based
activities as a way to become familiar with the materials.
Substance use and the legal system; Navigating the challenges of requiring treatment
Michael Lawless, MSW, LICSW, MLADC
The goal of this workshop is to discuss and develop strategies to
engage court involved, and mandated clients in the clinical setting who
are dealing with substance use and co-occurring mental health issues.
The focus will be on the specific challenges of mandated treatment and
how to align with clients in a way that will provide opportunity for
fuller engagement and increased likelihood of successful outcomes.
Attendees will discuss the challenges of working across systems where
clients may give consent, but not feel like they have much of a choice.
We will discuss the naturally occurring opportunities to help
individual clients develop insight around issues they may be struggling
with regarding substance use. A focus will be on the specific
challenges of Opioid use, and the unique challenges to this
classification of drug as it relates to particular client populations.
Client Boundary Violations: When A Client Becomes a Stalker
Noel B. Dumas, Esq.,
Pandora L. MacLean-Hoover, LCSW
Attorney Dumas and Ms. MacLean-Hoover will present on ethical
considerations for Social Workers as these relate to client boundary
violations, with an emphasis on stalking. Examples of NASW guidelines
and state regulations will provide valuable insight and current tools
for practitioners working in this age of technology. The workshop will
include a real life example of how one clinical social worker, Pandora,
confronted this scenario and navigated those turbulent waters.
Intuition: The Inner Wisdom of Social Work Practice
Bette Freedson, LCSW, LICSW, CGP
Current research by Scott Miller and Mark Hubble suggests that there
exist healing forces that transcend current medicalized approaches to
provision of mental health and behavioral services. Utilizing didactics
and exercises, The Inner Wisdom of Social Work Practice presents
practical and corrective benefits of integrating intuitive insights into
social work practice. In this workshop participants will experience the
way mini-ideas and images, emerging within the inner mental flow of
provider and client, offer rich material for creative interventions that
can elicit empathic resonance, reframe negative narratives, evoke
adaptive realizations, shift focus from problems to solutions and result
in effective and enduring psychosocial outcomes. We will be considering
intuition as an ego state, examining similarities of an intuitive
approach with aspects of mindfulness and hypnosis. Special focus will be
placed on intuitive wisdom as part of innovative linear schemas such as
the “SOLVE Schema” and “Miss Bette’s” Simple Schema.”
Thursday Workshops – Block B – 3 contact hours
Parent Coaching as Clinical Intervention
Jude Currier, LICSW
With an alarming increase of mental health diagnoses in children,
especially those coming from chaotic families, the mental health system
continues to focus on an individual pathology model, a model ill suite
to children. Parent coaching can address system issues that often affect
a child's emotional functioning, as well as correct behavioral issues
that are often mistaken for mental health pathology. This presentation
will outline the parenting model, Choice Consequence Parenting, and its
application and deployment within this population. Focus will be on
providing steps for healthy behavioral and emotional outcomes for these
vulnerable children while sidestepping the mistake of identifying their
behaviors as a function of individual pathology.
Royal Road Revisited: Dream Interpretation for the Modern Clinician
Gretchen Davidson, LCSW
Jed Wilson, LICSW
Regarded by Freud as the “royal road to the unconscious,” dreams have
curiously been relegated to the margins of psychotherapeutic practice
since the dawn of the “talking cure” over a century ago. In this
workshop we will interrogate this marginalization and attempt to
reignite interest in the dream as a vessel for self-discovery and
reckoning with unconscious desire. After reviewing psychodynamic
theories of dreams and their interpretation, the workshop will open a
space for practice. Participants will be given opportunity to experiment
with the art of dream interpretation and acquire skills that can be
readily integrated into any style of psychotherapy.
Working with Older Adults with Clutter and Hoarding Challenges
Karen Kruzan, LISW-S, CPO-CD
Older adults living in cluttered and hoarding environments face a
variety of health and safety challenges. In this lively course you will
gain a better understanding of why older adults can have so much stuff
and trouble getting rid of it. You will learn strategies and techniques
for working with older adults in your office or in their homes.
The Dynamics and Skills of Supervision: The Parallel Process and the Interactional Model
Lawrence Shulman MSW, Ed.D
The focus of this workshop will be on understanding the core dynamics
and identifying the skills required to lead mutual aid support groups.
Examples presented by the instructor and those shared by participants
will be used to illustrate how to apply this understanding to a range of
set-tings (e.g., hospitals, drug treatment agencies, schools,
residential settings) and with a range of populations and problems.
Discussion will include how to integrate elements from Evidenced-Based
Practice (e.g., motivational interviewing, solution focused practice,
cognitive behavioral) in a non-prescriptive manner so that the group
leaders artistry is enhanced and not restricted by the science.
2020 Living and Working in a Digital World (Professional Ethics versus Today’s Reality)
Wanda Anderson, MSW, LCSW
This training will provide a safe forum to discuss ethical dilemmas
encountered in today’s fast moving era of technology. We will discuss
boundaries, confidentiality, personal and professional relationships as
they relate to cell phones, internet, digital notes, etc. as well as
other pertinent topics. We will also review and discuss the updates and
changes to the NASW Code of Ethics regarding technology.