Custom Training ~ Training that Transfers to the Workplace

GROUP HOMES/FOSTER CARE

	Courses	show all hide all

	Dysfunctional Families & Clients
	The family system from which a child comes has an impact on whether that child can mature in healthy ways and become successful and happy. Understanding dysfunctional family dynamics helps all of those involved with troubled kids, so adults are in a better position to manage, lead, intervene, mentor and support them. This course uses three family traumas: incest, domestic violence, and substance abuse, and focuses on the impact of these behaviors when they are embedded in the family system. Participants become very familiar with family roles and possible interventions. Community resources are identified, and skills needed to communicate with these families are taught and practiced.
	Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y: Working Together
	Each of the generational groups has a different value system and way of experiencing the world and the workplace. This course is tailored to fit your department's unique needs and provides each participant the information that helps create a deeper understanding of all the generational perspectives. It also provides the communication skills to bridge the "generation gap," so staff are able to focus on their work and not on generational workplace friction.
	Brief Crisis Intervention Counseling
	This dynamic, interactive class combines vital counseling skills and strategies for daily interaction with kids using all the components of effective crisis diffusion. Participants learn the steps involved in an escalating crisis situation from the standpoint of the juvenile and the proper response from the staff member to effectively diffuse the crisis situation before the critical control phase (use of force) takes place. They learn to anticipate an impending crisis and avoid it. Participants also learn to effectively and strategically use their body, voice, attitude, bearing, and personality to gain and keep control of situations.
	Building Client Rapport
	Building rapport with adolescents and using simple behavior modification strategies prepares juvenile facilities staff to interact and work with kids more safely and effectively. Staff identify challenges they experience with kids and practice specific skills to build and maintain relationships that promote bonding, trust, and behavior change while maintaining a “firm, fair, and friendly” stance. The importance of active listening is stressed and structured activities support and enhance the retention of listening skills. Participants explore the importance of teamwork among staff members in role modeling positive behaviors for the kids. This class is easily customized to focus on a particular identified issue, if necessary.
	Conflict Management
	This course addresses unmanaged conflict. Participants discuss unresolved workplace conflicts that often have disastrous consequences: increased anxiety, anger, intimidation, blame, resentment, and loss of productivity. The instructor provides the tools to manage conflict in a positive way, turning a conflict that was once a liability into an asset. This course addresses a variety of situations, from the most mundane procedural conflict to high tension and potentially explosive confrontations. This class is for all staff, from those whose first instinct is to react with anger in a difficult situation to those who avoid conflict so much they are paralyzed.
	Creating Courses for Internal Training
	Engaging participants in the learning process and creating transfer learning takes more than a good presenter and quality content! In this course, a course designer learns to meet the needs of the sponsoring department with clearly defined learning outcomes. Participants also learn how to choose materials and activities that create dynamic learning environments. This requires the understanding of different learning styles, learner motivation, and time use. Participants are invited to bring a course idea and leave with a course designed! This is a powerful course if training units and content area experts want to shorten their course creation and execution learning curve!
	Crisis Diffusion
	This vital course imparts to a volume of information about how to identify and interpret warning signs and triggers. Oppositional Defiant Disordered youth, those who have just returned to the home after seeing their Probation Officer, those who have a “bad visit” with their parents, or have come from school etc., can all be in a mental/emotional state to become assaultive and can potentially harm themselves and staff. Solutions for dealing with these situations - as well as identifying all the stages of a crisis and the most effective manner and time to intervene - are covered in this class which uses role-play, helpful techniques, and solutions.
	Critical Skills for All Group Homes Staff
	Time is limited to make an impact on youth, but it is possible if all staff members consistently use the same strategies to meet the challenge and deal with their charges in a firm, fair, and consistent manner. The need to cover shifts 24/7 (with a variety of staff) makes it crucial that everyone be “on the same page.” This course covers the absolute basics from de-escalation, to five-minute counseling sessions. The focus is on building a working relationship with a child that can motivate desire to change.
	Diversity in the Group Home & Foster Care
	This course explores the impact of personal value systems, socialization, media, and generational affiliation on individual attitudes about other people. Participants identify historical changes that impact the experience of diversity here in this culture. While there is a discussion of gender, cultural, racial, class, and societal issues, the focus of this discussion is not what one might expect. Difference itself is generally the issue that divides people, more than skin color, cultural background, class, religion, or gender. This course allows participants to engage in a dialogue that leads to greater appreciation and understanding of difference while, at the same time, hones communication skills.
	Facilitated Problem Solving
	In this leadership course, department personnel get the opportunity and guidelines to learn the processes needed to redefine and/or create new programs, policies, and procedures. Learners practice the communication skills necessary to move forward with new ideas and create a framework for implementing a cultural change in any organization. From problem to idea, this course helps the organization facilitate change. This is a highly customizable course.
	Organizational Skills for Peak Performance
	Some days it feels like there is more information than can ever be organized and managed. The piles on one’s desk can seem like they get higher instead of shorter. Increasingly, information needs to be well managed to be understood. There is only one solution to this daily stressor: developing the necessary skills needed to effectively manage time, information, and projects. In Organizational Skills for Peak Performance, participants identify their organizational weaknesses in a series of activities. The emphasis of the day is then focused on the area of the participants’ identified need. Once specific needs are identified, specific tools to enable participants to turn their weaknesses into strengths are taught. Participants receive excellent, easy-to-use help which they can apply the next day.
	Positive Confrontation: The Alternative to Force
	Confrontation doesn’t have to mean “getting in someone’s face.” Verbal skills are a safe and viable alternative to force, when you know how to use them. Designed for those who have the ability to use force but want only to use it as a last resort, Positive Confrontation defuses escalation and provides a safer environment for the officers and people with whom they interact. Use of force can create personal and organizational liability, injury, and mountains of paperwork. This is a great course with powerful tools!
	Team Building for Positive Communication
	This course is designed to facilitate staff at all levels to come together and reflect on how they work as a team. Since the Mission Statement of an organization drives programs and defines ways that staff is to be with clients and each other, discussion time is spent comparing your organization’s Mission Statement with the individual’s Personal Mission Statement. Teams analyze their problem-solving dynamics in carrying out projects and look for more efficient and effective ways to complete projects and/or assignments. Activities facilitate participants in more open communication, conflict resolution, and giving effective feedback to others.
	The One-Minute Counselor
	This course prepares staff to become more effective by using short, focused verbal interventions as part of behavior modification. Participants become familiar with the psycho-social developmental tasks that are particular to adolescence and how to be empathetic to a child’s needs while still being firm and fair. Participants self-assess personal styles and come to understand how assertiveness with others is a valuable counseling tool which helps keep the workplace an emotionally healthy environment and lowers the probability of the need to use force with minors.
	Understanding Juvenile Development: Why Don't They Get it?
	Sexually, adolescents mature about two years earlier than they did 100 years ago. Today’s culture has grown-up children whose psychosocial and cognitive skills are not as developed as their bodies. This course gives participants guidelines in relating to differing adolescent age groups. The twelve to fifteen year-old teen is very different from the sixteen to eighteen year-old teen. Drug and alcohol use, chaotic families, mental and learning disorders, and the experience(s) of trauma, all impact the adolescent’s ability to understand and comply with court-appointed and other living situation guidelines. Using the developmental data, learners acquire communication skills that are highly effective.
	Win-Win Communication
	Conflict is normal and healthy in human relationships; however, it does not have to end up in a win—lose situation. We teach you how to have those "tough conversations” that get you what you want without making others angry or getting them defensive. Learn to control a conversation through listening (not talking). Take away powerful phrases that lead to solutions, and begin to take control through orchestrating a mutual “win” situation. Participants learn new skills and practice them the same day.
	Workplace Writing Skills
	This course builds skills. Participants learn to identify and correct grammatical/mechanical errors and build powerful sentences through their ability to identify and correct the comma splice and the run-on. In addition to correcting writing errors, the course underscores the differences between formal and informal writing as well as the need to identify and write to the expectations of specific audiences. Writing with tact and sensitivity enables writers to more efficiently and effectively compose emails that are professional, productive, and get positive results! Templates are included and participants take away the Workplace Writing Skills booklet which is rich in resources for reference back on the job.

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