Boundaries and Counter-Transference with System-Involved Youth

Sonja Lenz-Rashid, PhD, LCSW

Training Description

The training will take a developmental approach, focusing on the various emotional and physical boundaries that inevitably arise with working with system involved youth and children in foster care. This training will also utilize case vignettes and small group sharing to dig deep into the various counter-transference experiences we may face when working with system involved youth and children in foster care and how counter-transference may impact our information gathering efforts and strategies to support them.

Learning Objectives

1. Knowledge of the various types of boundary and ethical dilemmas that can arise working with system involved youth and children in foster care.

2. Knowledge of how trauma may impact a system involved or foster youth's experiences with boundaries.

3. Knowledge of how one's own Counter-transference can impact our information gathering and strategies to support system involved or foster youth.

4. Identify 3 techniques to use when boundaries are being tested by system involved youth and children in foster care.

Agenda 

9:30-9:35am Check in, Introductions and Agenda

9:35-10:30am Section I: Overview of Types of Boundary Dilemmas

10:30-11:15am  Section II: Case Vignettes and Discussion

11:15-11:45am Section III: Counter-transference (CT) when working with Foster Youth

11:45-12:15pm  Section IV: CT Case Vignette and Discussion

12:15pm  Check out and evalutions

Meet Our Trainer

Dr. Sonja Lenz-Rashid, LCSW, is a Professor of Social Work at San Francisco State University and a Co-founder and Faculty Research Evaluator of the SF State Guardian Scholars Program (GSP). Launched in 2005, the GSP serves over 90 current and former foster care youth on campus and has an annual budget of over $1 million (and is a non-profit on campus). Dr. Lenz-Rashid has studied the outcomes of, and best practice models for, former foster care youth at the national, state and Bay Area levels. Her research and publications have provided valuable feedback to child welfare administrators, legislators, and program developers in how best to serve these disenfranchised young people using evidence-based practice. She is also a consultant, trainer and clinical supervisor at a number of Bay Area non-profits serving children and youth being served by the foster care, juvenile justice, and behavioral health systems. She has over twenty-five years serving vulnerable youth in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This course meets the qualifications for (2.75) BBS CEUs for LCSWs, LMFTs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.