This four-part webinar series provides an introduction to attachment theory and how it can be applied to the family treatment .of children and adolescents with serious social and emotional issues. It is comprised of four modules. The first describes the role of an attachment focus in the operationalized version of ESFT and identifies clinical competencies involved in helping caregivers become a more reliable source of emotional support to their children. The second webinar describes the nature of attachment problems.  In the third webinar, the attachment system and how it creates an internal working model is explained.  The fourth webinar describes the nature of secure attachments, with a particular emphasis on how the concepts of attunement and intersubjectivity can be utilized to deepen therapeutic relationships

6.0 Hours  CE Credit

Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance and their Families (Updated 2-1-19)

 This course describes the population served by intensive in-home family-based programs – children and youth with Severe Emotional Disturbance (SED) and their multi-stressed families.  These children and their families often share a history of chronic trauma, family instability and loss, which can make treatable mental health issues become more chronic. In this course, insights about the experience of mental illness are shared both from the perspective of adolescents and that of their caregivers.  Multi-generational patterns that leave families vulnerable to crises are highlighted.  A webinar identifies common patterns found in multi-stressed families which maintain or exacerbate SED and the implications these patterns have for treatment. The objectives of this course are achieved through a combination of readings, brief videos, and a webinar. 

 3.0 Hours CE Credit

Histories of adversity and trauma are common among families served in intensive, in-home programs.  Although therapists may know the child’s trauma history, the caregivers’ current and past experience with adversity and trauma too often remains in the background, yet is equally as important for informing clinical decision-making.  The caregivers' histories of trauma have a major impact on family structure, parenting, and response to treatment.  This training introduces participants to current science and conceptualizations of complex developmental trauma, describing what it is and how it impacts brain development and brain functioning in children and caregivers.  Clinician-friendly concepts from neuroscience (e.g. Siegal’s “hand model” of the brain and Porges’ concept of neuroception) are introduced to help therapists gain a basic understanding of how trauma and chronic adversity shapes emotional availability and parent-child relationships.  Bruce Perry's neurobiology-informed neurosequential model of therapeutics is described as a useful tool for clinical problem solving. 

3.5 Hours CE Credit  

The primary objective of this course is to define and describe the nature of a therapeutic alliance in family therapy and explain why it is so critical to successful outcomes. Friedlander, Escudero, and Heatherington's empirically-based SOFTA model for understanding and assessing the strength of the therapeutic alliance is described in detail as it relates to intensive, in-home services. This model includes four relationship dimensions, which include a sense of safety, an emotional connection or emotional bond, a sense of being contributing partners, and a sense of shared purpose.  This course describes how to use individual subsystem work with caregivers and youth to develop balanced therapeutic alliances with all family members.   

2.0 CE Hours

Therapists who practice in the home and community face unique ethical challenges related to professional boundaries, dual roles, and confidentiality.  Unlike office settings, which are designed to maximize privacy, therapists working in the home are often at the mercy of happenstance encounters, such as family members or neighbors who may walk into a session unannounced.  It is much more difficult to protect sensitive and confidential information, yet therapists are ethically obligated to do so.  This course provides guidance on anticipating and navigating ethical challenges in home and community-based services involving confidentiality, dual roles, and boundary crossings.  A goal of this course is to ground therapists' decision-making process in the ethical codes established by all the major professional associations, such as NSW, ACA, and AMFT. 

3.0 Hours CE 

Timelines, like genograms, can be useful both in assessment and in creating a relational frame for intervention.  As an assessment, the timeline places presenting symptoms in a historical context. The timeline interview, when conducted with the entire family and critical life events of all family members are asked about, the timeline places presenting symptoms in a relational context. Using excerpts from a videotaped family session, this course demonstrates how to conduct a relational timeline, highlighting how it can used as therapeutic tool for shifting the family's perspective from a behavioral to a relational or systemic perspective.

1 CE Hours

Child violence directed at caregivers (CCV) involves coercive actions intended to gain power and control in the home.  CCV may involve physical, psychological, or financial damage, and is typically kept secret by families.  This introductory webinar reviews the prevalence of CCV, as well as relevant research on the problem.  A strong case is made for routine screening for CCV in family treatment.  Treatment recommendations based on an eco-systemic structural model of family therapy (ESFT) are described. 

This is an edited version of a presentation by the three Pennsylvania FBMHS training directors (Dr. Steve Simms, Pat Johnston, & Dr Wayne Jones) to a group of FBMHS supervisors on 9/14 for the Behavioral Health Alliance of Rural Pennsylvania (BEHARP), a collaborative representing 24 counties.

1.0 Hours CE

Therapists working in intensive, in-home programs are increasingly encountering youth who identify as LGBTQ.  One reason is that youth are coming out earlier and earlier.  In families presenting for treatment, caregivers often do not understand their child's experience and at times can be rejecting of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This markedly increases risks for negative outcomes for LGBTQ youth.  Therapists with little training in LGBTQ are at-risk of acting on myths or stereotypes and can become negatively isomorphic with nonaccepting communities.  This course is comprised of five webinars designed to help therapists to work from an LGBTQ-informed perspective,  understanding and helping LGBTQ youth in the context of their families and their communities. Particular focus is given to how to work with families in which caregivers are non-supportive/non-accepting of their LGBTQ youth.  The webinars in this course are comprised of edited portions of a live webinar presented to therapists working in Pennsylvania FBMHS programs. 

Relational Treatment Planning
 
Treatment planning in ESFT is more than pro forma paperwork separated from the actual on-the-ground treatment.  It is, in fact, an  intervention that can be a major determinant of treatment outcomes.  If done well, the treatment planning process shifts the viewing of problems and their solutions to a more relational perspective, setting the stage for highly focused, meaningful, productive work with motivated family members. This course describes procedures for making this happen.  Basic principles related to relational treatment planning are described.  
 
1.5 Hours CE Credit

Enmeshment is one of four structural patterns most associated with serious emotional disturbance in children. This course describes the characteristics of enmeshment and how this interactional pattern shapes children’s development of social-emotional competencies and their response to treatment. Treatment guidelines are highlighted, as well as common clinical traps that therapists are likely to encounter when working with enmeshed relational patterns. This course is an edited version of a live workshop presented for family-based therapists in February 2019.

5.0 Hours CE Credit

Authoritarian families are focused on maintaining order, control, and compliance. Coercion, bullying, abuse, and violence are common in these families. This course provides an eco-systemic framework for understanding these families, the caregivers who head them, and the types of problems they typically encounter with their children. Common traps therapists make when working with these families are identified, as are strategies for avoiding them. Strategies are provided for introducing more softness into interactions between caregivers and their children and cultivating more tolerance for dissent in the family.

4.0 Hours CE Credit

Enactment, an experiential method grounded in systems theory that brings interactional problems into the session for direct observation and change, is a component of all current evidence-based child and adolescent focused family therapies.  Enactment is the cornerstone of ESFT, where it is used to disrupt and shift negative interactional patterns to more functional ones.  This course introduces the method, describes what it is, differentiates it from other widely used interventions, and explains how and why it works.  A five-phase model based on Nichols and Fellenberg’s work is introduced as a framework for learning how to do an enactment, including setting the stage and looking for opportunities to initiate emotionally meaningful conversations, facilitating family members through the ups and downs of the process, and meaning making.  A step-by-step guide to enactment using excerpts from a family therapy session is provided.

1.5 Hours CE

Tailoring Supervision to the Individual Therapist

The focus of supervision needs to be informed by an assessment of the therapist's skill set, while the supervisor's approach to supervision needs to be informed by an understanding of the person of the therapist. This course presents a framework for thinking about the latter, exploring the influence of therapists' learning preferences, approach to handling emotional intensity, therapists' personal context (e.g. gender, race, life stage, values), and stage of professional development as a clinician.

2.0 Hours CE Credit

Supervising Two-Person Teams

One of the unique features of Pennsylvania’s Family Based Mental Health Services program is that it is team delivered. Not only must the focus be maintained on individual therapists’ development within the team, but also on development of the team itself. This course identifies the stages of team development and the most common team-based challenges supervisors face. The role of the supervisor in supervising two-person teams at each stage of development is highlighted, as well as supervisory strategies for addressing issues that arise.

2.0 Hours CE Credit

This is a resource folder for family based supervisors currently contracted with the Center for Family Based Training. It contains general annoucements, plus downloadable up-to-date training schedules, assessment measures, and supervisory tools/forms.

Resources for CFBT Faculty.

Foundations A Training Calendar