Professional Development: UBC Continuing Studies

UBC Continuing Studies

Professional Development Courses

CBT Theory and Essentials for Non-CBT Therapists
Sep 25, 9am-4pm, UBC Robson Square

CBT for Concurrent Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders

Sep 26, 9am-4pm, UBC Robson Square

Burnout Prevention – Understanding Vicarious Trauma and Compassion Fatigue
Oct 19-Nov 15, Online

Mindfulness and Neuroscience
Oct 23, 9am-4pm, UBC Robson Square

Motivational Interviewing for Helping Professionals – Introduction
Oct 30 & Nov 7, 9am-4pm, UBC Robson Square

Motivational Interviewing in Psycho-Educational Groups

Nov 13, 9am-4pm, UBC Robson Square

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Nov 21, 9am-4pm, UBC Point Grey

Renew You: Self-Care and Burnout Prevention

Dec 5, 9am-4pm, UBC Robson Square

Click here for more information and to register

Employment: MCFD Executive Director of Services - Kamloops

BC Public Service

Ministry of Children and Family Development

Kamloops

Executive Director of Services

The Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) promotes and develops the capacity of families and communities to care for and protect vulnerable children and youth, and supports healthy child and family development to maximize the potential of every child in BC.

This role is for a visionary, strategic thinker with the ability to identify opportunities for improving child welfare programs and services; and the ability to lead, coach and direct a multi-disciplinary team.

Qualification for this role include: BSW or MSW; or BA in Child & Youth Care; or M.Ed. Counselling/MA Clinical Psychology, or a related degree preferably in a social sciences discipline; minimum 5 years of progressive experience in a managerial role with responsibility for direct client service delivery; and extensive leadership, change management and influence management experience. Preference will be given to Aboriginal candidates.

To learn more about this opportunity, including how to apply online by October 4, 2015, please visit: https://search.employment.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/a/highlightjob.cgi?jobid=28583

Only applications submitted through the BC Public Service’s employment will be accepted.

Professional Development: The new science of romantic love: what you understand you can shape

An Evening Keynote and Day-Long Workshop with Dr. Sue Johnson

Date: Sept 29-30, 2015

Location: The Haven, Gabriola Island

Evening Keynote

The new science of romantic love: what you understand you can shape

Tuesday September 29, 7:00-8.30pm

Day-long workshop for counselling professionals

Couples Therapy in the 21st century – a new era

The workshop will outline the Emotionally Focused Model of Couple Therapy (EFT), and how it illustrates the new science of love and bonding. The EFT model represents the cutting edge of couple interventions and addresses the three main tasks of therapy; creating a safe haven alliance, working to regulate and transform emotions and emotional signals, and choreographing a couple’s dance to foster emotional connection and fulfill attachment needs. 

The day will include didactic presentations on love and attachment, the state of couple therapy and the conceptual and clinical base of EFT as well as experiential exercises and observation and discussion of therapy sessions.

Participants will be able to:

· Outline the laws of human bonding and how they operate in adult love relationships.

· List the stages, steps, and interventions of EFT.

· Make sense of the stuck places that perpetuate negative cycles and emotional disconnection in love relationships.

· Describe how to set up new bonding interactions that redefine connection and change working models of attachment.

· Outline how to adapt the model to different individuals, including escalated, traumatized, and depressed partners.

· Consider how the therapist’s style fits with the model or creates blocks in working with emotion and shaping new dances.

The package price for the keynote and one day workshop is $300. Accommodation and meals are extra.

To register contact the Haven’s registration office 1.800. 222 .9211 x 1 or email register@haven.ca or register online at:

http://www.haven.ca/programs/sue-johnson.html

Clinical: Severe poverty affects children's brain development, study finds

Severe poverty affects children's brain development, study finds

That kids who grow up poor do less well in school is well documented, but researchers find that part of that poor performance stems from how their brains grow and work.

By: Guy Boulton Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Published on Sun Aug 30 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/08/30/severe-poverty-affects-childrens-brain-development-study-finds.html

A six-year study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has added to the mounting evidence that growing up in severe poverty affects how children’s brains develop, potentially putting them at a lifelong disadvantage.

The study — which combined the expertise of neuroscientists and economists — found that the parts of the brain tied to academic performance were 8 per cent to 10 per cent smaller for children who grow up in very poor households.

It was based on a relatively large sample of predominantly white children whose mothers were much more educated than the general population. And the results show a biological link between growing up in extreme poverty and how well children do academically.

“The significance of the study is providing a hard physical link between the experience of growing up in poverty and how well children do on cognitive tests,” said Barbara (Bobbi) Wolfe, an economist at UW-Madison and one of the co-authors of the study.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics in July, builds on animal studies and other research suggesting that poverty affects the parts of the brain tied to self-control, attention, planning and other traits important for success in school and life.

The children often receive less nurturing from parents and live in environments characterized by increased stress from crowded housing, instability, poor nutrition, limited stimulation and more exposure to violence.

That children who grow up in poverty do less well in school is well documented. But studies increasingly show that at least part of that overall poor performance stems from how their brains grow and work.

The UW study estimated that as much as 20 per cent of the gap in test scores could be explained by slower development of two parts of the brain: the frontal lobe and the temporal lobe.

The frontal lobe is important for controlling attention, inhibition, emotions and complex learning. The temporal lobe is important for memory and language comprehension, such as identifying and attaching meaning to words.

Both areas of the brain develop through adolescence.

“It provides a brain-based explanation for why children living in poverty are not performing academically as well,” said Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry and director of the Early Emotional Development Program at Washington University School of Medicine. Luby was not involved in the study.

The UW-Madison study was led by Wolfe and Seth Pollak, a professor of psychology and director of the Child Emotion Lab.

The study drew on 823 magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans of 389 children, ages 4 to 22, from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study done to show normal brain development. The scans were done from November 2001 to August 2007, and the NIH study included complete information on the families’ social and economic status.

The design of that study provided additional support for how poverty affects brain development in children.

Here’s why:

• The mothers of the children included in the study were much better educated than the general population — 84.9 per cent said they had at least some college education.
• Families were screened for several factors suspected to adversely affect brain development, such as children who were born prematurely or who had other risky neonatal histories, who had low IQs and whose families had a history of psychiatric conditions.

The sample, in other words, was not representative of children growing up in extreme poverty.

“And we still found this drastic difference in brain development,” Pollak said.

The study, though, also contained an encouraging nugget: It found no significant difference in the brain development of children who grew up in so-called near-poor households — those with incomes above 200 per cent of the federal poverty threshold, or $40,180 for a family of three — and those who grew up in middle-class or even upper-middle class households.

“What that says to me is that humans can actually deal with a quite a lot,” Pollak said. “We are not delicate orchids.”

Research shows that early interventions, such as home-visitation programs for families and preschool for children, are effective and have the potential to change lives.

That’s because the brain has more “plasticity” early in life — it responds more quickly to changes in environment.

The studies on how poverty affects the development of children’s brains are relatively new. Few existed a decade ago. But now more studies exist, and they are getting more attention in policy circles.

They suggest the need to invest in children, Wolfe said.

If society doesn’t, she said, “they are worse off, and we are all worse off.”

Professional Development: Ethics: Analytical tools for Social Work Professionals

Dr. Merlinda Weinberg: Ethics in the Helping Professions
School of Social Work, Dalhousie University. Retrieved from: http://ethicsinthehelpingprofessions.socialwork.dal.ca/?page_id=47

Dr. Weinberg has provided some analytical tools for professionals that expand thinking on ethics, and after giving an example, discusses their usefulness. Rather than seeing language as simply reflecting reality, Dr. Weinberg believes that it constructs what we take to be truth. The power of new concepts is to transform unarticulated senses and experiences, giving voice to them.

For example, the concept of “black is beautiful” is a potent device to subvert racism and potential notions of the inferiority of people of colour and can change people’s perceptions of themselves and others. Therefore, putting terms into the lexicon of social science theory helps make those ideas real and useable. We cannot think outside of discourse, so adding concepts can expand our thinking of what is ethical.

The analytical tools discussed are: 

• ethical trespass
• moral distress
• discursive fields
• preferred and actualized selves

Employment: Team Leader, Child and Youth Mental Health - Terrace

BC Public Service

Ministry of Children and Family Development

Terrace

Team Leader, Child and Youth Mental Health

Under the direction of the Community Services Manager, the Team Leader administers child and youth mental health services by providing direction, leadership and supervision to professional staff on the Child and Youth Mental Health Team. The Team Leader has the authority, accountability and responsibility to plan, develop, manage, coordinate and evaluate the delivery of mental health services for children, youth and families in the Terrace area. The Team Leader has broad responsibilities to work with diverse community partners to promote the establishment and maintenance of a full range of mental health services within the community.

This is a multifaceted role and the successful applicant may have any or all of these qualifications: Master’s Degree in Social Work (Clinical Specialty or equivalent training/education), Educational Counselling, Clinical Psychology, Child and Youth Care, or equivalent; Master’s or Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing and licensed under the Registered Nursing Association of BC and/or the College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of BC; Ph.D. in clinical/applied psychology, and registered with, or eligible for, registration with the College of Psychologists of British Columbia.

Terrace is a thriving city surrounded by amazing scenery and offers great weather and unlimited outdoor activities (see video).

For more information, including how to apply online by September 20th, 2015, please visit: https://search.employment.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/a/highlightjob.cgi?jobid=28071

Attention: only applications submitted through the BC Public Service’s employment website (see link above) will be accepted.

Burnout: After 37 years in social work I had nothing left to give

After 37 years in social work I had nothing left to give 

Endless budget cuts and seeing my staff sink under a pressure I couldn’t alleviate became too much, so I took early retirement

Anonymous. The Guardian (2015). Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/social-life-blog/2015/sep/02/social-work-pressure-early-retirement

When I tell people I have taken early retirement from social work they usually say “lucky you”. I just smile, because the decision to leave a permanent post in a profession to which I have given 37 years of my life was both frightening and emotionally draining. So why did I do it?

I qualified in my mid-twenties when the certificate of qualification in social work took 11 months to complete. I would never recommend this length of training, but what made up for it was the freedom to learn on the job. I didn’t have lots of admin to do, so could be out all day working with service users. I dropped notes off at the end of the day which were typed up for me to check whenever I returned. I had line managers with the time to help me plan and debrief from visits. I was never frightened about talking about my gut instinct or saying that I might have made a wrong decision, as this was seen as a learning opportunity.

I remember a stable, confident and enthusiastic workforce with lots of experienced social workers, who would accompany me on visits and were always available for advice. It would be easy to look back with rose tinted spectacles but, to be fair, it wasn’t all rosy. A child could be placed on the child protection register without a parent’s knowledge; there was no real recognition of sexual abuse or the impact of emotional abuse on children; and there was very little join-up between services. So there have been positive changes in practice over the decades.

I have always embraced this change and I have been blessed with a level of emotional resilience and a good sense of humour that has sustained me. However, over the last few years the energy I needed as a senior manager to try to maintain standards of practice while endlessly cutting budgets and being under intense scrutiny has taken its toll. On an emotional level, watching my staff sinking under a pressure I couldn’t alleviate, while trying to reassure them that it would get better when I wasn’t sure it would, brought me to a tipping point.

Outside of work I was spending a lot of time with an osteopath who told me I had chronic neck and back problems related to stress. Then came a Sunday when the family rang to say they would be arriving earlier than planned for a holiday. I cried and said that that if I couldn’t work all day I could not have the leave I had planned – even though I had already worked a 60-hour week, which had become the norm. The final straw came some weeks later when I was sent on a course for future directors. I broke down again and told the course leader I had nothing left to give.

This might all sound dramatic, but it led to an honest discussion with my line manager. I was lucky to have worked for the same local authority for 17 years so my concerns about being burnt out were taken seriously. Luck was on my side, as the service had decided to fund a post for 18 months to concentrate solely on the workforce. They offered me this job and then asked if I would like to be considered for early retirement. After more crying and discussion with family and friends I said yes. Interestingly, no one told me to say no.

During that last 18 months I regained my energy and passion. I was in a role where I could be creative and make mistakes without being pilloried. I was working directly with frontline staff, service users and stakeholders to redesign the workforce and I was energised again through working with so many creative and passionate people. I also realised that, like me, their commitment was being worn down by the burden of unrealistic expectations. Selfish as it may seem, I didn’t have any doubts about my decision to leave.

Having retired with energy restored I knew I couldn’t just give up. I retained my social work registration, and have been doing a mixture of different roles in the sector. I can now say yes or no to work I am offered, and I get a real sense of job satisfaction as I can actually complete pieces of work. I count myself lucky to have had an employer who valued me enough to listen and give me an option to use my skills in a different way. It is my way of giving back to the profession at a time when so many experienced social workers are leaving.