Working with System Involved Youth and their Families Using Evidence Informed Principles: An Overview

Pamela Parkinson, Ph.D., LCSW

Training Description

This training is targeted to those who support system involved youth and their families within community settings such as in the schools and homes. We will focus on understanding unhealthy family relationship patterns and traumatic attachment ruptures via the use of the Pain in the Heart Theory (PITH). For youth in the continuum of care, their lives are very disrupted by these ruptures due to removal from home, losing placements, deportation and incarceration, to mention a few. Once we are able to understand the pain, we will be ready to know where the healing needs to occur so that our youth can start experiencing positive outcomes in all of their settings including more likelihood of not being removed from the home, successful reunifications and more sustainable permanent placements!

Learning Objectives

· Participants will be able to identify at least 2 primary family systems concepts that create the basis for Pain in the Heart Theory.

· Participants will be able to identify 4 pain questions that underlie Pain in the Heart (PITH) Theory and which family relational concepts each one addresses.

· Participants will be able to identify at least 2 strategies that address and heal the relational pain our youth in the continuum of care are experiencing so that we are healing traumatic attachment ruptures and supporting successful outcomes.

Agenda

9:30-9:45AM  Welcome and sign in.

9:45-10:30AM  Overview of the Evidence Based Movement. Where we have been. Where we are headed.

10:30-11:15AM  Brainstorming and discussion of the reasons to work with families and the reasons that you might be hesitant!

11:15-11:30AM   BREAK (CE hours will not be offered for this time)

11:30-11:45AM  How are Secondary and Primary Emotions different?

11:45AM-12:00PM The skill of Centralizing and how we become the lightening rod.

12:00-12:15PM  The intersection of Positive Reframing & Empathy: Can’t have 1 without the other

12:15-12:30PM  Using Facilitative Questions to bring the family pain into the “room”.

12:30-12:45PM  How Enactment relates to the healing of traumatic attachment ruptures.

12:45-1:15 PM  LUNCH (CE hours will not be offered for this time)

1:15-1:30PM  Identifying emotional boundaries and the pain they can cause in families.

1:30-1:45PM  Trauma and retraumatization in families.

1:45-2:00PM  Getting to the heart of what PITH Theory is.

2:00-2:30PM  Cultural impact on family trauma and Salvador’s Minuchin’s belief about this.

2:30-2:45PM  BREAK (CE hours will not be offered for this time)

2:45-3:15PM  Review of video clips of a real family and practice identifying process and positive intent.

3:15-3:45PM  Small group work to understand the pain from a PITH perspective and large group sharing of one strategy, or service, that you might try 

with the family to begin the healing process.

3:45-4:00PM  Discovering the pain for each family.

4:00-4:15PM  Tasks for you to try in your very next family meeting.

4:15-4:30PM  Check-out process 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 with an emphasis on the importance of family engagement and on the healing of traumatic attachment ruptures in work with youth, especially youth who we serve in our continuum of care: child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and the school systems. Dr. Parkinson is also a certified PCOMS evidence-based practice trainer. She currently works as a child/family trainer and 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 (6.0) 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.