Workshops and Schedules

Workshop schedule subject to change

Keynote: Your Compass!

Tana Bridge, PhD, LMSW

Did you choose this profession or did it choose you? Social workers enter this profession driven by personal values, intrigued with the human condition and desire to improve the quality of life for the most oppressed and underserved individuals in our society. This work is amazingly difficult and yet we maintain hope and are steadfast in our service.    

Your compass! ~  This keynote will focus on 'our compass' including the core values and critical skills that distinguish our profession. We will also explore 'your compass' with the promise of advancing personal growth and safeguarding against compassion fatigue.  

Dr. Tana Bridge is a professor of Social Work at Eastern Michigan University. Her advanced studies include a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan and a Doctorate in Philosophy from Wayne State University. Dr Bridge is recognized for her passion, expertise, and skills in engagement. She has a 25-year track record of excellence in teaching, service, and professional consulting. 

Dr. Bridge’s expertise in trauma, ethical practice and collaboration are common threads in all areas of engagement.  Dr. Bridge currently serves on many local and state-wide committees and is the Governor’s appointed chair to the State of Michigan Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect. She is well regarded for training across the United States in trauma, vicarious trauma, and ethics.

Dr. Bridge has several awards and certifications. She is the recipient of a Trauma and Loss Consultant of the Year Award from the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children and the Marshall Service Award, Excellent Teachers Engaging Alumni Award and the distinguished Ronald W. Collins Award. She is licensed in both clinical and macro practice. She holds several advanced certifications including Advanced Certified Trauma Practitioner, Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, and Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional. 

Afternoon Plenary

Celebrating Generational Differences

Gerri King, PhD

Monday Workshops

Block A – 1.5 hours

Attachment-Based Play Therapy Techniques for Children and Families
Chelsey Helmke, LICSW
This workshop will review the latest research and theories about attachment, child development, and family therapy as well as provide a variety of play-based interventions to address attachment wounds in child and family therapy. Presenter will review the connections between traditional attachment theories and newer research on neuroscience and brain development. These theories will include Bowlby’s foundations of attachment theory, the circle of security, the importance of the therapeutic alliance, and neurological research that emphasizes the importance of attachment on early brain development. Presenter will emphasize the difference between attachment “wounds” and childhood trauma. Presenter will use expressive play therapy techniques including movement based techniques, art therapy, mindfulness, theraplay, and role play to instruct attendees on a variety of interventions that can be used to enhance attachment in work with children and families. The workshop will include some instruction on theory and multiple interactive activities to practice the interventions. Finally, the workshop will review how using attachment based techniques fulfills our ethical obligations to children as clients, specifically our responsibilities to dignity and worth of person, social justice, and the importance of human relationships.

Law Enforcement Critical Incident: Debriefings and Stress Reduction
Sgt. Patrick Dawson
The point of the presentation is to outline various calls that law enforcement responds to. Several will be outlined, including an unattended death, fatal motor vehicle accident, and suicide. After speaking about each event, then discussing the stresses that law enforcement officers take on and the methods used to help cope with this stress. The predominant focus will be critical incident stress debriefings.

Substance use and the legal system; Navigating the challenges of requiring treatment
Michael Lawless, MSW, LICSW, MLADC
The goal of this workshop is to discuss and develop strategies to engage court involved, and mandated clients in the clinical setting who are dealing with substance use and co-occurring mental health issues. The focus will be on the specific challenges of mandated treatment and how to align with clients in a way that will provide opportunity for fuller engagement and increased likelihood of successful outcomes. Attendees will discuss the challenges of working across systems where clients may give consent, but not feel like they have much of a choice. We will discuss the naturally occurring opportunities to help individual clients develop insight around issues they may be struggling with regarding substance use. A focus will be on the specific challenges of Opioid use, and the unique challenges to this classification of drug as it relates to particular client populations.

Strengthening Generations
Cynthia Hogan, LICSW, Amanda Hogan
Mother-daughter team with over 3 decades of combined work history in child welfare reflect on shared experiences in the NH child protection system. The discussion will focus on why investment in the field of child protection matters to children, their families, and to the future of New Hampshire. The workshop goal is to state the importance of longevity in the child protection workforce, and to identify the systemic barriers to developing and retaining Division for Children, Youth & Families staff.

Preparing for College Emotionally not just Academically
Jennifer McAllister, MSW, LICSW
Preparing for college is more than just academics and testing. Todays college students experience record high levels of stress, depression and anxiety and as more and more young people are headed to college with an already diagnosed mental health condition we must look at ways to help them be better prepared and be emotionally ready. This presentation will allow participants to learn ways to better support students, help them learn to take a more active role in managing their mental health and create the greatest opportunity for them to be successful.

Malingering in the Acute Care Setting: Ethical and Practical Perspectives
April Viverette, LCSW, MBA, CCM
This presentation seeks to inform social workers about peer experiences in working with malingering patients and best practices in working with patients or clients who may be or suspected to be malingering.

Block B – 3 hours

The Mediating Role between Clients and Their Social Systems
Lawrence Shulman, EdD, MSW
Social work as a profession emerged historically from two streams – clinical practice and social change. This unique functional role means we always have “two clients”, the individual is one, and their important social systems the other. For example, a school social worker might work with an individual student having problems in school, while simultaneously attempting to have a positive professional impact on the school staff dealing with the student. This workshop will describe this “mediating role” and the dynamics and skills necessary to establish a positive working relationship with both the client and these other systems. Examples provided by the workshop leader, and workshop participants, will illustrate how professional impact on the “system”, including the social worker’s own agency or setting) may be the best intervention for the client. The core model will be illustrated by practice examples from a range of settings as well as from private practice.

Ethical Issues Related to the Issues of Assisted Dying
Kenneth Norton LICSW
Laws in several countries as well as US states have changed in recent years to allow individuals with terminal illnesses to end their life under the care of a physician. This issue presents challenges and difficult personal, religious, sociocultural, and professional considerations for clinicians, health care providers, and suicide prevention advocates. Even the terminology, as indicated in the title, is emotionally-charged. This workshop will provide a historical context by reviewing important religious, medical and legal decisions impacting on this issue as well as looking at the arguments for and against the issue. The workshop will facilitate a structured dialogue represented by the perspectives of workshop participants about how to better understand the complexities of this issue.

Becoming an Intuitive Wizard: An Intuitive and Integrative Approach to Social Work Practice
Bette Freedson, LCSW, LICSW, CGP
In this didactic and experiential workshop participants will examine an intuitive approach to social work practice that integrates both linear and non-linear concepts and interventions. The therapeutic utilization of intuition will be explored and discussed from the perspective of three key phenomena: 1.) The social worker's state of receptivity to his/her own intuitive ideas, sensations, images and mini-thoughts; 2.) The provider's state of readiness to utilize significant material from the client’s personal story; 3.) Innovative utilization of metaphors, re-imagined stories, and resource-full intuitive moments for re-associating dissociated and latent ego strengths. Participants will be introduced to The ACE Schema, a 3-step model dedicated to the development of intuitive skills.

Ethics and Technology 2022
Lee Pozzi Rush, LICSW
The use of technology in social work is no longer a remote possibility but a necessary and integral part of our everyday life. The recent revisions to NASW’s Code of Ethics have led social workers to re-visit their ethical decision-making practices. This workshop will expand this discussion and look at how social workers develop social media policies, both in agency settings and as individual social workers. Other questions that will be addressed: How will social workers ensure that they are competent in using technology effectively and ethically in their practice? Can social work practice be delivered effectively with the use of technology? This workshop will explore ethical decision-making especially as it relates to the use of technology in social work or clinical practice. and the implications for our work. Participants will learn to apply ethical decision-making standards to the use of technology in social work. Workshop will be engaging and interactive as it explores the use of social media, telehealth, and videoconferencing in social work and psychotherapy. Workshop will advance beyond the new NASW Code of Ethics and address current agency and individual integration of technology in the practice of social work.

Parent Coaching as Clinical Intervention
Jude Thaddeus Currier, LICSW
With an alarming increase of mental health diagnoses in children, especially those coming from chaotic families, the mental health system continues to focus on an individual pathology model, a model ill suited to children. Parent coaching can address system issues that often affect a child's emotional functioning, as well as correct behavioral issues that are often mistaken for mental health pathology. This presentation will outline the parenting model, Choice Consequence Parenting, and its application and deployment within this population. Focus will be on providing steps for healthy behavioral and emotional outcomes for these vulnerable children while sidestepping the mistake of identifying their behaviors as a function of individual pathology.

Narrative Medicine: The Healing Power of Story
Aimee Burke Valeras, Ph.D., LICSW Andrew Valeras, DO, MPH
Narrative medicine entails using art (stories, poems, visual art, music, video clips) with reflective writing prompts in a deliberate and systematic way to allow for the sharing of individual stories to nonjudgmental peer feedback in a way that promotes careful listening and observation offering an opportunity to enhance empathetic practice and self-care processes. Listening and sharing narratives allows us to find commonalities. Connecting in this way enables vicarious witnessing of experience, emotion, perspective, or suffering, altering our own comfort zones and encouraging new ways of thinking. As such, narrative medicine pushes us to build empathy, compassion, and satisfaction. This workshop will lead participants through a variety of narrative medicine exercises to experience the transformative power of the process of connecting and reflecting to combat symptoms of burnout. Participants will also be provided with the tools and resources to consider bringing these exercises to their home settings.

Block C - 1.5 hours

SMART Recovery
John Gramuglia, LICSW
This workshop will provide attendees knowledge of the SMART Recovery approach to self-help. Participants will learn the basic components of SMART Recovery meetings and how to employ the techniques of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy of which SMART is based. During the workshop there will be a review of the SMART Recovery Four Point program and the basics of facilitating a SMART Recovery meeting.

Can Prison Nurseries Fit Within Smaller Correctional Departments? Examining Feasibility and Impacts.
Brooke Sheehan, LCSW
Ever heard of the concept of a prison nursery? If not, you are not alone! There are currently 8 states within the country that offer this type of service to incarcerated pregnant women, allowing them to nurture secure attachment styles in their infants after giving birth while learning skills for healthy parenting. If you are interested in learning more about the history of female incarceration, impacts of maternal incarceration on family systems, or are interested in learning how this service is provided in a correctional setting, this is the presentation for you. There will be a special focus on feasibility within smaller correctional departments which frequently do not offer this type of service to their incarcerated female populations.

Grief After Death by Overdose: Working with Survivors
Tana Bridge, PhD, LMSW
While there are groups and supports for people experiencing the loss of a loved one, death by drug overdose often creates complicated and unique grieving for survivors. This session will offer a review of challenges and themes in grieving found in the literature and identified by surviving family members. This session will review common tasks in healing. Further, features of and skills in developing and facilitating a support group will be discussed.

Our Warming Climate: Social Work Tools to Foster Resilience
Carol Hart, LICSW Rebecca MacKenzie, LICSW
As we observe our warming climate creating chaos around the globe, we realize the social work perspective of Person-In-Environment needs to expand to include our natural world. Extreme weather events are happening more regularly, as well as more subtle shifts, such as the increase of Lyme disease, threatened livelihoods, and the increase of climate-related depression and anxiety. Social workers stand in a unique position to use our knowledge, experience and skills to facilitate our own self-care as well as help mitigate global warming through policy advocacy. We can deliver trauma-informed interventions to individuals and groups, and organize communities to adapt to changing conditions. This presentation will include information about the devastating effects of climate change on micro and macro levels of life, especially for those who are most vulnerable, as well as concrete tools from neuro-biology and energy psychology for building personal and community resilience.

Activating the Four Dimensions of SELF
Celia Grand, LCSW
We change through conscious intention and awareness. The awareness of our sense of SELF is multidimensional. Our brains are everevolving and our sense of SELF is driven by our experiences. The brain's unconscious physiological impulses from the deepest parts of our brain to the higher-order processes of our brain activate our perception of life and our sense of SELF. This workshop is designed to take you through a journey of the latest neuroscience of our sense of SELF to our felt sense of spiritual perceptions and experiences. You will learn tools to engage your consciousness for change at each dimension of self-awareness

Tuesday Workshops

Block D – 2 hours

Affirming Healthcare for Transgender and Gender Diverse Clients- Social Workers Make a Difference
Brandy Brown, LCSW
Social workers have not consistently had adequate training in specific issues facing transgender and gender diverse people. However, with a growing population seeking care, social workers need to not only provide affirming care, but engage systems of care to improve equity and access. Social workers have the unique ability to lead change efforts for transgender people at all practice levels. This presentation will review assessment of healthcare needs that transgender people face, specific disparities that youth experience, change models used in effecting systemic change, and a call to action for social workers to increase their education and competency and to engage their systems of care to ensure transgender people, as a vulnerable population, receive equitable care.

Guns, Violence, and Mental Illness: Is there a connection?
Kenneth Norton LICSW
Tragic incidents of mass shootings have dominated the news and furthered public perception of fear and stigma towards individuals with mental illness. Yet often left out of the media coverage and public conversations is that suicide deaths by firearms are more than double the number of homicide deaths. Media coverage of gun violence and mental illness is often anecdotal and rarely based on research and science. Through lecture, presentation, interactive polling and discussion, this workshop will explore the connection between violence, and mental illness as well as substance use disorders including a review of research identifying risk factors for violence. The workshop will also look at gun legislation and policy issues related to mental illness and or substance misuse as well as the role media plays in shaping this conversation.

Finding the Balance: Social Work Integration within the Interdisciplinary Health Care Team
Maria Koehler, MSW Sarah Gilman-Lard, LICSW
Social workers have become an essential and evolving role within health care. Social work expertise is a pivotal point for patient centered care. Behavioral health, primary care, case management, discharge planning, grief counseling, illness coping, support groups, and system work, are all examples of how integrated the social work role has become. Social workers have a unique opportunity to be the glue for the interdisciplinary team, acting as a team member and as a patient advocate; this is the challenge. Our advocacy and modeling serves as the basis for educating the team and improving patient care. How do we rise above the misconceptions that exist about social work in a host setting? How do we remain helpful but true to our scope of practice? How can we better care for the patient while improving the knowledge of their providers, and learning alternative ways to think about cases ourselves?

Changing the Aging Conversation in NH
Jennifer Rabalais
The population of older adults is growing in New Hampshire, because we are living longer and staying healthier as we age. However, negative attitudes and mental models about aging are still pervasive in our society. Research has proven that such attitudes about aging are bad for our health and are a barrier to advancing solutions to improve the experience of aging. The National Reframing Aging Initiative is working to advance a new story about aging that recognizes the challenges and opportunities that increasing longevity poses to our communities. The NH Alliance for Healthy Aging (NH AHA) is part of this national effort to change the aging conversation. NH AHA representatives will share research and tools developed by the experts at the FrameWorks Institute and engage participants in activities towards a new way to talk about aging that is better for everyone’s health.

Integrating Findings from Evidenced-Based and Evidenced-Informed Studies in Social Work Practice
Lawrence Shulman, EdD, MSW
Social workers and their agencies are increasingly turning to Evidenced-Based Practice (EBP) and Evidenced-Informed Practice (EIP), for example solution focused, cognitive-behavioral, motivational interviewing, in an effort to support the scientific base for their work. This workshop will focus on how elements of these models, including specific interventions, can be integrated into a unique social work model instead of adopting the EBP or EIP model as a whole. Presentation by the instructor, illustrated by examples from the instructor and participants, will demonstrate how to avoid a mechanistic practice while still using the science to enhance the practitioner’s unique social work role and artistry. 

Block E – 2 hours

Off the Charts: Suicide Prevention and Older Adults
Bernie Seifert, MSW, LICSW
Suicide is a serious issue among older adults. Suicide rates are particularly high among older men, with men aged 85 and over having the highest rate of any group in the country. This workshop will outline the myriad of factors which may contribute to this, including how the physical frailty of this age group may lead to the likelihood of attempts to be more lethal. Risk factors that can be applied to the general population seem to be more profound in older adults, including the increased prevalence of co-morbid medical conditions, depression, social isolation, and decreased chance that individuals in this age group will seek mental health services. This program will go over these risk factors, as well as how to identify and expand upon protective factors to help prevent suicide.

An Introduction to Internal Family Systems Therapy
Tammy Sollenberger, LCMHC
We all have been of two minds about something. For example, you may have thought, “A part of me wants kale, another part wants brownies.” IFS says we are all multiple and have inner voices who relate to one another like members of a family. All our parts, even the most critical and harmful ones have good intentions. When we befriend them with our Authentic Self, they can soften and we can heal. The Self is our internal natural leader who, when in the driver’s seat, helps us feel calm, connected, confident. In Self, we have clarity to reach goals and compassion for vulnerable parts of us. This workshop will teach the components of the IFS model and the 6 healing steps. You will walk away with practical tools to begin implementing the model and, most importantly, you will have space to get to know your own internal family.

The Importance of Self-Assessment in Cultural Humility Training
Jude Thaddeus Currier, LICSW
The teaching of cultural competence in social work has come a long way in the last 30 years. The movement towards the idea of cultural humility represents a wonderful maturing of the understanding of our own place in assessment of culture. What remains however is a gap in our own self-assessment around issues of racism and discrimination. This course seeks to elevate the importance of self-assessment of one’s own capacity for discriminatory attitudes as an integral part of learning about other people's cultures to improve service delivery.

Responding to Human Trafficking in New Hampshire
Rebecca Ayling, MSW
This presentation aims to assist attendees in developing an understanding of the needs, mindset and experience of survivors of human trafficking to enable a thoughtful and productive clinical response and relationship. Individuals across New Hampshire are experiencing human trafficking and have often gone unidentified and underserved. When ready to engage in supportive and therapeutic services survivors share that they struggle to describe their experiences and difficulties in order to receive the services they desperately need and desire. This session will discuss the shame and self-blame that survivors experience as well as the bias and challenges clinicians face when responding. This session will then discuss resources, tools and recommendations to assist clinicians in working with survivors of human trafficking.

Critical Time Intervention: Improving Practice with Clients in Transition
Kimberly Livingstone, PhD, MSW
Critical Time Intervention (CTI) is an evidence-based practice that assists vulnerable individuals to make successful transitions from institutions to the community. CTI is a short-term, phased approach to case management that is based on core principles. CTI helps to create and/or enhance connections to long-term supports in clients’ communities. CTI has been implemented with individuals being discharged from hospitals, leaving homeless shelters for permanent housing, and moving into the community following incarceration. CTIinformed practice has helped to improve practice with individuals making various transitions within support systems. This workshop will focus on the CTI principles and how they can enhance clients’ continuity of support during periods of transition.