Let’s Connect Professional Training: Building successful connections between adults and the children and youth they care for
taught by Lucianne Hackbert, Ph.D. & Monica Fitzgerald, Ph.D.
October 20-21, 2017
Overview
This highly interactive training will provide professionals with the foundation to integrate Let’s Connect (LC), a program that promotes healthy adult-child relationships, into a variety of clinical and community settings where they work. LC offers a developmentally grounded and trauma-sensitive lens to help adults to see children’s needs and perspectives more clearly.
This training is open to professionals working with children, youth, and families, including mental health providers, social service caseworkers, juvenile justice professionals, school counselors, community mentors and advocates involved in youth organizations.
*If you are interested in the half day introduction workshop to Let's Connect, check here.
Details: Let’s Connect is a trauma-informed program that targets 3 interrelated skill areas:
- Adults’ awareness of their own and the child’s emotions and emotion regulation skills
- Adults’ use of concrete steps to guide their response to children’s emotional arousal and challenging behavior in supportive ways
- Adults’ use of behaviorally-specific caregiver-child emotion communication skills that model and build emotional awareness and regulation skills and healthy coping in children and youth.
- This training will provide participants with insight on how to better understand children’s social-emotional needs and to respond skillfully. Participants will learn how to coach parents and caregivers in attaining new skills.
The workshop curriculum will include:
Day 1 and Day 2:
Introduce the theory and scientific context for LC including relevant research on child development, positive parenting and interpersonal neurobiology.
Learn the LC Core Components:
- Psychoeducation to build a base of knowledge including the following topics: Social and emotional development and the markers for health, Why emotions are important for all of us, the universal need for human connection and the power of nurturing, the impact of adversity, chronic stress and trauma, the role of successful connection for resilience and recovery and the mental and behavioral challenges commonly experienced by children and youth
- Social and emotional skills to build emotional awareness, and self-care and effective ways to communicate and connect successfully
- Contextual sensitivity to embody competence at all levels across the whole system of care
- Review and discuss how LC can be used as a strategic enhancement to evidence-based mental health treatments for children and families
- Learn and practice the LC Skills using vignettes and role-play and receive feedback.
Learn and practice LC strategies for self-care:
- Hand-to-Heart 3-step process
- Guided visualization
- Belly Breathing
Day 3:
Review the steps to become an LC Coach including follow-up consultation:
- Group consultation for six months after the training at an additional cost.
- Individual consultation from the LC Trainers as you apply the skills in your child and family settings.
For more information on the LC Professional Training, please visit the Let's Connect website training page.
LC is considered a promising practice by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, It has also been recognized as a promising strategy in Child Trendsnewly released report on early care and education programs that effectively address early childhood trauma.raining Dates
October 20 – 22, 2017 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
Friday: 9:00am – 5:00pm
Saturday: 9:00am – 5:00pm
Sunday: 9:00am – 12:00pm
Training Cost
The cost of the full training is $425.00, which includes a certificate of completion and CEUs.
About the Presenters
Lucianne Hackbert, Ph.D. (Right) is a licensed clinical psychologist and Research Associate at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences at University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Hackbert is one of the three developers of Let's Connect, and has 10+ years of experience developing and implementing Social and Emotional Learning programs to foster resilience in children, families and communities. Dr. Hackbert’s work has involved integrating creativity, mindfulness and movement into evidence-based approaches to address the needs of children, youth and adults and across various settings such as homes, schools, hospitals and community spaces such as gardens. Dr. Hackbert’s professional life is committed to helping adults to engage with children and youth with confidence and competence.
Monica Fitzgerald, Ph.D. (Left) is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and one of the three developers of Let’s Connect. Dr. Fitzgerald’s clinical and research interests focus on the impact of violence and trauma exposure on children’s emotional and behavioral adjustment, parent-child interaction patterns and parental emotion socialization practices, and approaches to implementing and disseminating trauma-informed, evidence-based prevention programs and treatment interventions in community settings and human service systems (e.g., community mental health centers, schools, child welfare). She is the Director of the Evidence-Based Practice Training Initiative and co-director of the Trauma Center of Excellence (a SAMSHA funded project). She is a co-investigator on a NIJ Comprehensive School Safety grant to evaluate the feasibility and impact of the Safe Communities Safe Schools Model in Colorado schools. Dr. Fitzgerald is an expert trainer in Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Abuse-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (AF-CBT), and regularly conducts trainings and provides consultation for these models nationally and internationally.
Pay it Forward - Support the Scholarship Fund
If you are able to pay more for the course, we encourage you to consider donating to the Mindfulness Outreach Fund which allows CCFW to offer 50% and 100% scholarships to community members to aid in the cost of registration fees for mindfulness courses. Scholarships are awarded to increase accessibility of mindfulness and compassion training for individuals who have limited resources to obtain such training and to those who work in communities experiencing adversity. To make a donation to the scholarship fund, please visit http://giving.uw.edu/mindfulness
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Contact Information
Marcellina DesChamps
Associate Director of Programs
Center for Child & Family Well-Being
Office: 206.221.8508
Email: mindful@uw.edu