As part of our continual updates to this site to make it more useful for practitioners, we have added a new feature: a discussion group mailing list! Invitations to join were generated this morning from our training attendance records, but if you missed out, you can join by visiting the group page
here.
As a member, you will receive automatic updates when this blog is updated, as well as have access to the entire community of child welfare professionals enthusiastic about using safety-organized practices in their work. Members can send out questions, tips, and valuable resources to each other as a group by emailing the group.
All messages from this list will include [SOP] in the subject line, which you can use as a filter keyword to keep the messages out of your inbox and in a folder by themselves, for you to catch up on when you have time (if you would like assistance in setting up a filter, please leave a comment or contact Matt Austin for help).
More Upcoming Classes
In other news, the Academy has scheduled more training coming up soon. The trainings are:
Family Meeting Facilitation Part II
March 15, 2012, in Davis at the Buehler Alumni Center
This is the one-day follow up training for participants in any of Heather Meitner's previous two-day family meeting trainings held in Davis or Redding in October 2011 and January 2012.
Safety Planning (New course!)
March 14, 2012, in Red Bluff at the Red Bluff Community and Senior Center
March 16, 2012, in Davis at Putah Creek Lodge
This hands-on workshop will engage participants in a dialogue and practice activities about safety planning with children and families to create rigorous, on the ground, sustainable safety plans with child welfare-involved families and their support networks. Safety planning is a process social workers must repeat with families at different points during a case. Effective safety plans create clear and observable guidelines about contact between the children and the potential danger within the context of the family’s culture.
Based on the Signs of Safety, Safety Planning process, the group will expand their knowledge of safety organized practice into co-creating concrete detailed plans of action made in response to specifically identified dangers (behavioral and action driven) that go beyond our current case plans with families. This course is geared towards child welfare direct service staff, supervisors, and family meeting facilitators.
Family Meeting Facilitation (Facilitation Skills for Family Team Meetings)
April 9-10, 2012, in Davis at Putah Creek Lodge
Based on popular demand, Heather Meitner's two-day FTM training is back! This course has been filled to capacity in October and January. Enrollment is capped at 30, so act fast if you've been missing out!
This is an experiential training for facilitators of Safety Organized Family Team Meetings (FTM) in child welfare agencies. This curriculum is designed to be used in conjunction with pre-training reading and exposure to Signs of Safety concepts and safety mapping conducted with a family. The purpose of Family Team Meetings (FTM) of any type is to build agreements between the Department, families, providers and other essential team members. It is largely the responsibility of meeting facilitators to bring a very disparate group of people into FTMs and build critical agreements and decisions.
In this two day facilitation training, you will learn the strategies and skills for helping groups solve problems and build agreement to enhance the safety of children and families. This workshop will provide you with a solid foundation of theory and facilitation practice skills for immediate use.
Reunion of Sharing and Learning: Deepening Safety-Organized Practice including Signs of Safety and Structured Decision Making
April 17-18, 2012, in Davis at the Center for Human Services Da Vinci Building
This reunion is offered to all Northern counties that participated in previous three-day training with Phil Decter and Raelene Freitag for the implementation of Signs of Safety and Structured Decision Making. This two-day reunion will include learning circles, and participants should be prepared to bring examples of your work, successes and challenges to share with your peers. The training will build on prior foundation learned while deepening practitioners' knowledge and skill in Safety-Organized Practice. We encourage sending a team of practitioners to share and deepen their child welfare practice. The first two days of the reunion are open to all staff in counties implementing SofS. There is also a special one-day session for managers and directors on April 19 with separate registration (see below).
Reunion of Sharing and Learning: Deepening SOP Leadership Day
April 19, 2012, in Davis at the Center for Human Services Da Vinci Building
On the third day of the reunion, we will host a discussion exclusively for child welfare leaders and county directors. This leadership day will focus on the implementation of Safety-Organized Practice. We will review the evaluation outcomes to date, strategies for supporting training, coaching and practice integration. Topics include maintaining and deepening the practice; spreading the practice to the community, courts and others; examining the data; and more.
Please note: enrollment in the Leadership Day is separate from enrollment in the reunion; managers and directors planning to attend all three days must register for both the reunion and the leadership day.
To enroll in any of these courses:
Contact your supervisor or training coordinator to enroll in any of these courses.
