Boundaries, Boundaries, Darn those Ethical Boundaries When Working with System Involved Youth

Pamela Parkinson, Ph.D., LCSW

Training Description

Do you ever struggle with how close or distant your relationships with system-involved youth should be in order to maintain your ability to be helpful? We provide support to youth in our continuums of care and to their families in their own homes, in schools, in their communities, and remotely; this can be confusing for us and for those we support as to what our roles are and what kinds of relationships are being developed. The true helping relationship requires clear relationship boundaries so that we don't unintentionally exploit system-involved youth and/or their families or experience our own compassion fatigue. This training clarifies what we mean by boundaries, ways in which we might be overstepping them, what is meant by dual relationships, and other issues regarding the boundaries we need in order to offer support that will allow system involved youth  and families to achieve positive outcomes!

Learning Objectives

· Participants will be able to identify 2 ethical boundaries and explain what they “look like” in our work.

· Participants will be able to identify 2 reasons why boundaries are easy to overstep and explain how to decrease the likelihood of doing so.

· Participants will be able to explain how our own self-awareness is directly linked to maintaining ethical boundaries within efforts to support system-involved youth.

Agenda

10:00-10:15AM  Sign In/Introductions

10:15-11:45AM  Section I: Ethical boundaries:

· Defining what we mean by boundaries.

· True/False Quiz regarding different kinds of boundaries

· Unintentional Harm to our System Involved Youth

· Protecting ourselves from Burn-out

· Client symptoms can include poor boundaries

· The Overlap of countertransference/self-awareness with ethical boundaries

11:45AM-12:00PM  BREAK (CE hours not offered for this time)

12:00-1:00 PM  Section II -- Barriers to sustaining ethical boundaries:

· Lack of self-awareness: small group break-out discussions on what this looks like.

· Exploring why you are really in this field.

· Tempting reasons to self-disclose

· The conflict between personal and professional boundaries

1:00-1:30PM  Lunch (CE hours not offered for this time)

1:30-3:00PM  Section III: Culture and ethical boundaries:

· How “lived” experience can challenge our boundaries

· The importance of supervision in managing our boundaries

· Understanding our privileged and our subjugated “selves”

· How culture impacts our ethical boundaries

· Dual relationships and boundary issues

· Creating a therapeutic alliance and boundaries

3:00-4:20PM  Role play practice and discussion of a variety of typical boundary struggles in our everyday support of system-involved youth:

· When do we develop boundaries

· Our responsibility in creating boundaries vs. the system involved youth’s responsibility

· Explaining what our roles are to our system involved youth

· Developing good boundaries by using facilitative questions to help youth understand our roles.

· Saying “no” kindly to system-involved youth requests outside of our roles

4:20-4:30PM  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. Dr. Parkinson has spent most of her career working with system involved youth in our Continuum of Care (foster care, juvenile justice, mental health and the kids struggling in our school systems). She is a certified PCOMS evidence-based practice trainer. Pamela currently works as a child/family consultant to CBO’s in the Bay Area and 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 (5.75) 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.