Awareness of our Own Reactions and Countertransference when Supporting System Involved Youth and Their Families

Pamela Parkinson, Ph.D., LCSW & Kimberlin Leon, ASW

Training Description

Examine the reasons why you chose to support system involved youth and families. They can be a “double-edged sword”— by being both the very things that make us excellent at supporting them and they can also cause our burn-out. Explore how our own “stuff” impacts our efforts to support system-involved youth and their families and, if you work with others who support system involved youth, how to support each other. Discuss self-disclosure with system involved youth and families, explore ourselves and countertransference, identify how we know when we are over-involved with system involved youth we support, and review ways to address this.

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the importance of separating our own issues (countertransference) from those of the youth and families in our continuum of care.
2. Identify ways in which our self-awareness is directly linked to providing support to our system-involved youth and      families in a manner that can improve their outcomes.
3. How our stuff can interfere with system involved youth progress.
4. The importance of supervision to help us identify and work through our own stuff.
5. How dual relationships can lead us down a slippery slope.
6. Apply today’s learning on our own stuff to our work in this field:
7. Role plays to help identify our triggers and ways to react productively to them in the moment when we are with our youth.
8. Strategies for how to continue to identify our own triggers and ways to work on them so that they are less likely to interfere with of support of system-involved youth/families or lead to our own burn out.

Agenda 

10:00 AM – 10:10 AM  Sign In

10:00 AM – 10:45 AM  Section I: Defining the relationship between our own stuff and the tendency to step over ethical boundaries.

10:45 AM – 11:45 AM  Group work on self-exploration and who we really are.

11:45 AM – 12:00 PM  BREAK (CEUs will not be offered for this time)

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM  Identifying our own triggers when working with system-involved youth and their families.

1:00 PM – 1:30 PM  LUNCH BREAK (CEUs will not be offered for this time)

1:30 PM – 2:00 PM  Culture: Discussing differences with clients.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM  Role play practice of a variety of typical boundary struggles in our everyday work.

3:00 PM – 3:15 PM  BREAK (CEUs will not be offered for this time)

3:15 PM – 4:20 PM  Knowing our triggers is the start but now it is time to focus on the strategies for how to process them so that they will not interfere with our work with system-involved youth or lead to our own burn out.

4:20 PM – 4:30 PM  ADJOURNMENT

Meet Our Trainers

Pamela Parkinson, PhD, LCSW, is a clinical psychologist and clinical social worker, whose specialty area is working with youth and their families who are receiving services in our continuums of care. Dr. Parkinson’s emphasis is on the importance of family engagement and the healing traumatic attachment ruptures. Pamela is also a certified PCOMS evidence-based practice trainer. She currently works as a child/family consultant and trainer to CBO’s in the Bay Area and Pamela has worked in level 14 residential, NPS, hospitals, and a variety of community-based settings including outpatient clinics, schools, diversion, kinship, etc.

Kimberlin Leon (She/Her), ASW, is a Child and Family Therapist who specializes in serving youth and young adults who have experienced sexual exploitation. Originally from the Bay Area, Kimberlin worked for three years as a residential counselor at a crisis youth shelter in San Francisco before obtaining her Master’s in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley. A firm believer in the healing power of family relationships, Kimberlin strives to integrate a radically family-centered and strengths-based approach to her work with systems-involved youth and families. Kimberlin currently lives in Seattle, Washington, where she works as a field-based family therapist working with youth who are in the foster care system, navigating homelessness, or experiencing sexual exploitation, and their families.

This course meets the qualifications for (5.5) 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.