Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Thursday, January 29, 2026

Virtual
9:00 am – 12 pm (ET)
3 CECs

Registration Fee: $75
UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors receive a 10% discount

Link to webinar will be included in your email confirmation

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, mental health clinicians face new ethical challenges around confidentiality, data security, and informed consent. This engaging training is designed to equip clinicians with practical knowledge and real-world strategies for using technology ethically and responsibly in their practice. We will explore best practices for telehealth, digital record-keeping, and client communication, while strengthening our understanding of privacy laws and ethical codes. Join us to gain confidence in making informed decisions that protect your clients—and your professional integrity—in the digital age.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the options for the use of technology in practice
• Learn the ethical pitfalls for using technology
• Explore how to use technology safely and effectively
• Anticipate potential future risk with technology

 

Anthony Gay and Qur-an Webb

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Live Webinar
6 pm – 8 pm (ET)

This webinar explores the intersection of neurodivergence, trauma, racial inequity, and fatherhood, equipping social workers, educators, clinicians, and family service professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively support neurodivergent fathers and fathers raising neurodivergent children. Using a strength-based, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive framework, the session challenges traditional interpretations of behavior and helps participants develop practical, inclusive, and actionable engagement strategies.

This webinar reframes neurodivergence as a social-justice issue, highlighting how undiagnosed traits, systemic bias, and misunderstanding contribute to father disengagement and poor family outcomes.

Learning objectives:

Explore the core neurodiversity concepts including distinctions between neurodivergent, neurotypical, and neurodiversity terminology 

Understand the insight into how trauma, poverty, racism, and systemic inequity intersect with neurodivergence, particularly for fathers of color 

Develop strategies to recognize and support undiagnosed neurodivergence in fathers who may present as angry, resistant, disengaged, or noncompliant.

Description Coming Soon!

Anthony Gay and Qur-an Webb
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Live Webinar
6 pm – 8 pm

This webinar is a safety-intensive training designed to equip child protection professionals, outreach workers, and community-based staff with the knowledge and situational awareness needed to work safely and effectively in gang-impacted neighborhoods. Building on the foundation set in Unmasking Gang Culture, this follow-up session shifts focus from gang education to real-world application, giving professionals the tools to recognize early warning signs, de-escalate tension, and preserve personal safety without compromising youth engagement.

Participants will examine how gang dynamics shape both individual behavior and neighborhood environments, and how those dynamics affect the safety of staff working in the field. Through detailed strategies, scenario practice, and visual identifiers, this training centers the reality that safety is not just about physical presence it’s about psychological readiness, cultural competence, and relational intelligence.

Learning objectives:

• Identify street-level gang indicators in high-risk environments.
• Understand how to enhance engagement with gang-involved individuals.
• Recognize environmental red flags and safety planning.
• Develop trauma-informed safety strategies, de-escalation and exit protocols

Ruth Pearlman, LCSW, LICSW, M.ED

Wednesday, March 4, 2026

10 am – 12 pm (ET)

Live Webinar
2 CECs

Registration Fee: $50
10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and current SSW Field Instructors

Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete.

Magical Thinking, the cognitive process of assigning direct cause and effect to life events, was once thought to only occur in young childhood. Recent research supports that Magical Thinking is present throughout the lifespan, especially when we are confronted with traumatic and/or grief events. This workshop will explore how the Magical Thinking of traumatic events in childhood forges a narrative of self-blame that the child brings into adulthood. We will explore how to clinically expose the destructive self-blame stories that clients have carried within themselves. We will explore ways to assist clients in reconstructing their narratives. This workshop will also examine elements of Magical Thinking that child perpetrators use to manipulate their victims into silence. Lastly, we will discuss the tendency for traumatically grieved clients to re-employ Magical Thinking in their guilt and shock over the deaths of loved ones.

Please note: This workshop will contain content regarding childhood sexual abuse and suicide.

Learning objectives:

1. Participants will be able to identify Magical Thinking throughout the lifespan
2. Participants will learn how to assist clients in reframing narratives that have been distorted by Magical Thinking Cause and Effect beliefs.
3. Participants will understand the role of Magical Thinking in the cognitive processing of grief.

Lauri Goldkind, Phd, MSW
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
10 am – 11:30 am ET
1.5 CECs

Registration Fee: $38
UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors receive a 10% discount

Webinar link will be included in your confirmation email.

Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT, have captured the attention of the country as their ability to write jokes, poetry, and prose — in seconds and for free, has bedazzled anyone who works with the written word. Educators have seen that it can write realistic student papers, including citations and personal anecdotes. Professionals have seen that it can generate realistic work-related writing such as progress notes, grant proposals and organizational newsletters.

What are the implications for social workers and social work practice? In this session, social workers are invited to learn about what AI is, what it can do for practitioners and how to think about ethical practice with AI tools. We will discuss our experiences, concerns, and emerging practice applications. Participants will receive a live demonstration and have the opportunity to consider how these tools can enhance their practice.

Participants will:

• understand the opportunities and challenges of integrating large language models into social work practice
• gain practical skills in integrating large language models into social work practice through case studies and hands-on exercises
• explore best practices for ensuring ethical and responsible deployment of language models in social work contexts, with a focus on transparency, informed consent, and ongoing evaluation to address ethical challenges specific to the field

Shane M. Scott, LCSW
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
9:00 am – 12:00 pm (ET)
3 CECs
Virtual

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

This interactive webinar will allow participants to deepen the understanding of individuals who are neuro-divergent, how it impacts their lives, as well as the intersection between neuro-divergency and the LGBTQ identity and what social workers can do support their clients. This training will also provide insight the high prevalence in both identities, as well as a review of both identities, risk factors, and how to best support this population. The session will include lecture, activities, media presentations, and case studies.

Participants in this webinar will:

• learn and/or reinforce what is neuro- divergency, and review of the components of gender and sexuality
• discuss the concepts of intersectionality and the overlap of both identities
• examine the high prevalence of Autism and ADHD in the LGBTQ population
• learn risk factors, protective factors, best practices, interventions, as well as gain self-awareness and how to recognize provider biases and limitations

Donald F. deGraffenried, LCSW, EMDRIA Senior Trainer
Friday, August 8, 2025
In-person at the UConn Hartford Campus
8:30 am to 4:30 pm
7 CECs
*Also approved for 7 EMDRIA Credits (Approval #08012-22). Please see the note at the bottom of the page

Registration Fee: $175
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

This one-day hands on training will provide a comprehensive refresher on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy in both theory and practice. Areas covered include predictors for success, demonstration of the mechanics, forms of bi-lateral stimulation, review of the eight phases, cognitions, and supporting optional processing.

Multiple case examples will be presented including working with victims of violence, especially crime victims and survivors of homicide. In addition, participants will watch two client videos and there will be a live demonstration of the EMD Protocol which is helpful in crisis and emergency situations.

Trainer deGraffenried is looking for one volunteer to work with him using the EMD Protocol during the training. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact him before the training at donald@traumatreat.com.

At the conclusion of this one-day refresher, participants will be able to:

• complete a simple self-evaluation of their skill base
• briefly summarize the Eight Phases of EMDR
• effectively describe how to perform the demonstration of the mechanics
• state the advantage of using eye movements as the form of bi-lateral stimulation
• state two advantages of using EMD as a protocol
• define an overactivated and underactive client
• describe three major components of the Recent Event Protocol
• plan for and incorporate the use of the Visual Assessment Tool in support of gathering information needed for the Recent Event Protocol with crime victims
• state two or more of the advanced go to the body techniques
• list two or more spiritual cognitive interweaves
• exhibit the ability to analyze which of the EMDR models will best serve the needs of clients who are survivors of gun violence

* EMDRIA Credits have been approved for this training.  Participants who have completed Basic Training in EMDR will receive 7.00 EMDRIA Credits at the end of the training. You must be present for the entire training to receive the credits.

 

Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Tues, July 15, 2025
Virtual
9:00 am – 12 pm
3 CECs

Registration Fee: $75
UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors receive a 10% discount

Link to webinar will be included in your email confirmation

Patricia Wilcox, LCSW
Live Webinar
Wed, June 18, 2025
10 am – 12 pm
2 CECs

Recently social service agencies have been acknowledging the effects of working with, feeling empathy for, and having responsibility for trauma survivors. Whether this effect is referred to as vicarious trauma (VT) or secondary traumatic stress, there is no doubt that the work can influence the treater’s world view, their sense of safety, their own relationships, their sense of hope and their energy and enthusiasm for their work. However, agencies often take the approach that this is mainly an individual problem, to be solved by the treater on their own time and at their own expense with self-care and good boundaries.

This presentation will challenge some of the myths of vicarious trauma, such as that work is entirely depleting and that home life is entirely fulfilling; and that there is such a thing as work-life balance. The book Reducing Secondary Traumatic Stress: Skills for Sustaining a Career in the Helping Professions by Brian C. Miller (2022 Routledge) will provide the scaffolding for specific techniques that can help our workers retain and grow their hope and energy in the work, and thus reduce turnover. We will cover areas such as: debunking the myths of VT; developing skills to enhance our work lives; understanding that appreciating intensity rather than avoiding it helps us thrive; bringing joy into our work lives; developing radical compassion; and recovering from crisis. . We will also explore the assumption that trauma encounters are inherently fatiguing. We will investigate the premise that the cure for exhaustion is not rest- it is wholeheartedness. Participants will leave the workshop with action steps to bring to their agencies.

Participants will be able to:

• Identify three myths about vicarious trauma and their alternative truths
• List eight skills to sustain treaters in their jobs, and create agency plans to teach and support these skills
• Develop three strategies to increase the joy in their workplaces
• Identify three actions to create agency structures to support treaters in recovering from crisis.