9 am – 12 pm
Instructor: Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II

This workshop seeks to help social work supervisors to support staff working with children and families in crisis using various supervision models. Supervisors will learn to guide their staff in assessing the diverse needs, strengths, and limitations of their clients. The workshop will also explore techniques to support staff in ethical practice and effective communication with children, family members and family groups.

Learning Objectives (Supervisory Best Practices):

1. Support supervisees in understanding and recognizing signs and symptoms of mental illness in children and adolescents
2. Teach supervisees to comprehensively assess the needs of children and their families in crisis
3. Engage supervisees in collaborating with inter-professional teams to engage appropriate systems in response to clients’ needs
4. Guide supervisees in developing effective communication with children and their families
5. Support supervisees to use culturally informed, ethical, and equitable approaches to working with children and their families
6. Assist supervisees in navigating complex issues of confidentiality and mandated reporting in service to children and families

All therapists want to be exceptional, and this workshop can show you how

Across all helping professions, research shows that techniques don’t lead to better outcomes. Have you ever wondered why the DSM doesn’t guide treatment more effectively? And, what explains why some therapists are better than others if it isn’t the theory they’re using?

Control-mastery Theory, emerging from decades of elegant research, can help answer these questions and provides ways to understand how therapy works across techniques, practitioners and clients. This perspective may be the best way to learn to be a better therapist.

In this introductory workshop you will learn the basics of this approach which you can begin to apply to your work right away. There is actually no evidence supporting the idea that one technique is superior over another. But there is strong research evidence for the therapist’s increased effectiveness when responding to an individual client’s particular problems and goals. This means to be effective and truly helpful therapists need to understand what the individual client wants and how they will use therapy to achieve those goals.

Control-mastery is more a stance than a list of techniques based on an empirically derived method of case formulation, called the Plan Formulation. This approach provides a learnable framework for understanding a client’s conscious and unconscious goals, the beliefs and obstacles that prevent the client from pursuing their reasonable goals toward a more satisfying and functional life, traumatic experiences that contributed to the development of those obstacles, and what the most helpful stance is that the therapist can take. This theory helps you understand not only what to do, but how to be a particular client’s therapist.

This workshop will provide participants with the Control-mastery case formulation method and how to use it, an understanding of how trauma shapes beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, how the therapist attitude can help to change those beliefs, and be more flexible, creative and case specific with clients.

Using lecture, discussion, and in-depth case examples demonstrating the application of this stance, participants will:

• Learn the fundamentals of Control-mastery Theory
• Understand how this theory advocates for an individual “client-driven” approach
• Develop an appreciation for how necessary countertransference is and how to utilize it to deepen their understanding of what the client is trying to resolve
• Understand the Control-mastery perspective on trauma
• Practice application of the principles of the theory on clinical cases

Ruth Pearlman, LCSW, LICSW, MEd
Wednesdays, Nov 13 and 20, 2024
10 am – 12 pm
4 CECs – participants must attend both sessions to earn CECs

Registration Fee: $100
10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and Current SSW Field Instructors

Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete.

In response to feedback from participants in her previous trainings, instructor Ruth Pearlman has expanded this webinar to 2 parts. Even before COVID children were grieving losses that were not largely recognized or understood. COVID has magnified the grief experience of children on multiple levels. A child’s response to loss is dependent on many factors including age, emotional development, relationship, and social supports. Ms. Pearlman will explore children’s concepts of death and non-death losses applying Piaget’s Cognitive Theory to understand how
children conceptualize loss at each stage of development.

Day 1 will focus on lecture with ample opportunity to ask questions and interact with the instructor and other participants.  Day 2 will focus on the application of the content provided on the first day.

In this webinar, we will:

• identify a spectrum of non-death losses in childhood
• review Piaget’s Cognitive Theory and apply it to children’s understanding of loss
• examine the role of magical thinking in children’s developmental understanding of loss
• identify modern grief terminology
• specifically examine the loss and grief trajectory in the lives of children in foster/alternative care

Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Friday, Dec 6, 2024 – In-person
9:30 am – 4 pm
5 CECs

Registration Fee: $125
UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors receive a 10% discount

Classroom location, driving directions and parking details will be included in your email confirmation

The 5th edition of the DSM brings with it some of the most significant changes between editions. In addition to changes in the disorders themselves and how they are grouped, the diagnostic system has been revamped. Are you prepared to incorporate the changes into your practice and to diagnose your clients accurately? This workshop will identify the changes introduced in the new DSM, comparing editions IV and V, and identifying the changes most likely to affect your individual practice, using many case examples as practice. This training is appropriate for all diagnosing clinicians, and for those who want to better understand the diagnostic process.​

Participants are requested to bring a copy of the DSM 5 to practice diagnosis using clinical vignettes during the workshop.

Learning Objectives

• understand the major philosophical changes to the diagnostic process in the DSM 5
• learn the categorical and disorder changes and additions introduced in the DSM-5
• compare diagnoses in the DSM-IV and DSM-5 using the same clinical vignettes
• examine the assessment tools published with the DSM-5
• practice diagnosis using the DSM-5 through numerous clinical vignettes

Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Friday, Dec 20, 2024 – In-person
9:30 am – 4 pm
5 CECs

Registration Fee: $125
UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors receive a 10% discount

Classroom location, directions and parking details will be included in your email confirmation

What questions do you ask your clients that get at the information you need? What language do you use? How do you take into account a client’s culture in the questions that you ask? How do you address silence, or an unwillingness to participate in the interview? How do you refocus a client or deescalate his or her aggression? What questions can you ask to get at specific symptoms and how do you adjust your query in session as needed? While many trainings examine symptoms, psychopathology, and existing diagnostic assessment tools, this seminar has the actual clinical interview at its focus. We will explore how to gather the information you need for diagnosis and treatment planning, and hone your clinical interviewing skills.

This seminar will teach participants how to utilize interviewing techniques that meet the needs of the clients they serve, which strengthens both the individual client’s treatment experience and the profession as a whole. The topic connects to diversity in allowing participants to attend to the diverse background of their clients in the specific questions that are utilized, as well as specific ideas in how to ask the questions, (e.g. language, non-verbal communication, vocal tone). It connects to ethics because attendees will learn how to ensure their clinical interviewing adheres to the strictest of ethical principles. It connects to advocacy because the better the clinical interview, the better treatment the clients will receive; treatment the clients deserve and need to build a healthy life.

This seminar will enable you to:

• gather all the needed questions to conduct a solid clinical interview
• learn the components of motivational interviewing
• explore how to direct and redirect the path of the clinical interview
• practice clinical interviewing skills; identify strengths and challenges

Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Thurs, Oct 31, 2024

Webinar
9 am – 12 pm
3 CEC

Registration Fee: $75
10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and current SSW Field Instructors

Link will be emailed when your registration is complete.

This training marries the essential elements of a successful supervisory practice with the foundation of the diagnostic process. Participants will gain tools to ensure that each supervised clinician can learn how to diagnose disorders and conditions that will be a treatment focus. This training will give participants tools to both evaluate and improve diagnosing tools, and how to troubleshoot and intervene as may be needed.

Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Thurs, Nov 7, 2024
Webinar
9 am – 12 pm
3 CECs

Registration Fee: $75
10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and current SSW Field Instructors

Link will be emailed when your registration is complete.

This training marries the essential elements of a successful supervisory practice with the core ethical standards of helping professions. Participants will gain tools to ensure that each clinician can grow an ethical practice that will help protect the profession, the clinician, and every client they serve. This training will give participants tools to both evaluate the ethical practice of each clinician and to strengthen any ethically weak areas, which will allow participants to anticipate and address problems before ethical violations occur.

Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Thurs, Oct 24, 2024
Webinar
9 am – 12 pm
3 CEC

Registration Fee: $75
10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and current SSW Field Instructors

Link will be emailed when your registration is complete.

We know that good supervision can be hard to find, and one major reason is that supervisors are rarely adequately trained. If you are a supervisor, or interested in becoming one, this training will help you build an ethical, engaging, effectual supervision practice.

In this webinar, participants will:

• explore the common mistakes supervisors make
• examine effective theoretical orientations and models of supervision
• explore the core components of the supervisory relationships and the needed tools

Donald deGraffenried, LCSW
Friday, October 11, 2024
In-person
9:00 am – 4:00 pm
6 CECs

Registration Fee: $150
10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and Current SSW Field Instructors

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an innovative and powerful therapy used for the desensitization of PTSD and other mental health concerns. It has been in existence for over fifty years, is research validated and many clinicians have questions about the therapy.

This one-day workshop will offer a primer on the theory, practice, and application of EMDR in agency and community mental health settings. The workshop will provide a definition of EMDR and will address a model for how it works and what contributes to its effectiveness. The eight (8) stages of the treatment process will be discussed in depth, with case examples. The use of affect management tools that support client use of EMDR will be reviewed and demonstrated.

A live demonstration of an EMDR session will be provided, addressing the presenting image, negative cognitions, feelings, and body sensations that are effectively treated with EMDR. Teaching modalities will include lecture, demonstrations, PowerPoint, group discussion and EMDR DVD’s.

The implementation and application of EMDR in agency settings will be explored with an emphasis on effective start up tools for practice, written informed consent and the use of scaling questions to enhance client feedback and treatment satisfaction. How to obtain the full six-day EMDR training and issues related to consultation and supervision will also be explored in depth.

This one-day workshop is designed as an introduction to EMDR for clinicians, administrators, agency directors and other individuals interested in EMDR. It is an introduction to the training and many individuals may go on to take the full EMDR training after taking this introduction. It does not qualify you to provide EMDR therapy.