Being Strength-Based with System Involved Youth: Avoiding the Labeling Trap!

Pamela Parkinson, Ph.D., LCSW

Training Description

Strength-based, strength-based, strength-based! Wow, this seems to be an important mantra in our field! Since all of us understand our youth in our own ways, I hope that anyone supporting system involved youth and their families will attend! This training is about how we can remain strength-based when we have to use pathologizing/stigmatizing labels. While I hope that we are all advocating (in our own ways) for important changes that will allow us to be more strength-based and individualized, what do we do NOW to make sure that these negative labels don’t follow our youth in the system of care (foster care, juvenile justice and mental health systems)?

This training is meant to help us see the importance of understanding why our system-involved youth are struggling and how we can provide support for them without using negative labels! If we can get better at this, it will be a win-win for system involved youth, their families, and our organizations to better support them with better outcomes!

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

· Explain what being strength-baseddoes and does NOT mean and identify at least 3 principles of strength-based support that we can use with our system involved youth.

· Identify at least 2 negative language/labels are that we use and explain how these can follow our kids and worsen their outcomes.

· Explain: The role played by environmental risk factors related to stress and trauma that most of our kids in the continuum of care have experienced; The role played by Cultural Relativism.

Agenda

10:00-10:30AM  Check-in and defining/understanding what strength-based and negative labeling are.

10:30-11:00AM  Group work and brainstorming on specific pathologizing labels, and what we believe they tell us that is unhelpful to our system-involved youth.

11:00-11:15AM  BREAK (CE hours will not be offered for this time)

11:15-11:30AM  Listen to a video clip by Dr. Sami Timimi on labeling.

11:30-11:45AM  Specific ways that we pathologize based on labels: forgetting our empathy!

11:45AM-12:00PM  Successful outcomes in our field

12:00-12:30PM  LUNCH (CE hours will not be offered for this time)

12:30-1:00PM  Culture and Environmental factors in exploring/understanding the challenges of our youth: Applying these as a core factor.

1:00-1:15PM  Biological vs. Environmental factors: following the science.

1:15-1:30PM  Cal Aims and what kind of impact will it have?

1:30-2:00PM  Small group work on identifying and reducing the use of stigmatizing labels. Then large group sharing of small group explorations and ways to decrease labeling and stigmatization.

2:00-2:15PM  BREAK (CE hours will not be offered for this time)

2:15-2:45PM  Review of theory and what this actually is? I almost never hear anyone discussing theory in depth. It can’t guide our how we support our system involved youth if we don’t know what it is!

2:45-3:15PM  Understanding the history, development and culture of the family. Applying the impact of trauma on these.

3:15-3:45PM  Small group work on what you believe causes the symptoms of our SIY. Then large group sharing of small group ideas.

3:45-4:15PM  Group brainstorming of why some of our youth are referred to us, and what we can do to retrain ourselves away from pathologizing and more towards a strength-based lens.

4:15-4:30PM  Check-out and ADJOURNMENT

Meet Our Trainer

Pamela Parkinson, PhD, LCSW, is a clinical psychologist and clinical social worker, whose specialty area is working with youth and their families who are being served by our continuums of care. Dr. Parkinson’s emphasis is on the importance of family engagement and the healing of traumatic attachment ruptures. Pamela is also a certified PCOMS evidence-based practicetrainer. She currently works as a child/family consultant 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.

This course meets the qualifications for (5.5) BBS CE hours 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.