Structural Family Therapy: Contemporary Applications and Practices II
Course Description: This course builds on the Structural Family Therapy (SFT) Contemporary Applications and Practices Part I, with a particular focus on developing, refining, and effectively utilizing your therapeutic voice. Through a deeper exploration of SFT concepts and interventions, participants will examine the challenges of working with complex families who are involved with multiple systems, including the courts, parole services, hospitals, and child protective agencies.
Special attention will be given to engaging and treating highly chaotic family systems in which issues such as self-harm, domestic violence, and chronic crisis are present. Drawing from a structural family therapy framework, participants will learn strategies for navigating systemic complexities, strengthening therapeutic leadership, and promoting meaningful change in difficult clinical situations. (Contemporary Applications and Practices I is a prerequisite)
Trainings are 6 week – 2 hours each week.
Price: $595 dollars for 12 hours of training. CE credits included.
Location: All classes are virtual on-line.
Class Schedule & Instructor:
Intended Audience – Psychologists, Counselors, All Mental Health Service Providers working with families and children
Skill level – Intermediate to Advanced
Syllabus/Course Outline/Agenda
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
1.) Finding Your Therapeutic Voice: Develop self-awareness regarding the “use of self in the system” as a therapeutic instrument to map the family in SFT. Identify personal triggers and transactional patterns when working with high-conflict subsystems.
2.) Exploring Uncertainty: Explain how to use curiosity and hope, and uncertainty to destabilize the family system’s homeostasis. Explain the importance of “not knowing” by focusing on process-oriented structural shifts r ather than content-focused problem solving.
3.) Multisystemic Involvement: Demonstrate how to map the external systems (courts, protective services, parole) as part of the family’s structural ecosystem. Describe the ethical and therapeutic tensions between advocacy, reporting, and neutrality when agencies are fighting over maintaining their therapeutic territory.
4.) Self-Harm: Identify the communicative function of self-harm within the context of family hierarchy and boundary permeability (Cutting is the symptom of the system). Implement SFT-based safety protocols that empower the parental subsystem without pathologizing the identified patient.
5.) Chaotic Families: Assess the degree of boundary permeability in disorganized systems. Apply restructuring techniques to establish rigid-to-clear hierarchy transitions.
6.) Domestic Violence: How to respond to past violence and threats of current or future violence. Distinguish between systemic restructuring and safety planning in the presence of intimate partner violence. Evaluate the appropriateness of SFT for DV cases and identify when to refer or integrate specialized safety systems.
Continuing Education Credits sponsored by Ce-Classes.com. Approved for CE credits by multiple states and national professional organizations. CE Learning Objectives, woven into this 12-hour training:
Virtual class links will be emailed to registered attendees.
Policies
☐ Cancellations will be reimbursed 50% up to 2 weeks prior to the day of first class. After that, full payment is forfeited or credited for a future training for up to one-year.
☐ Grievances: All grievances must be in writing to Rich.Lally@minuchincenter.org (for Cara Brendler’s course) and DrWilliamRyan@gmail.com (for Richard Lally’s course). Grievances will be replied to within 10 business days.
☐ ADA assistance: This online workshop complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Please contact Rich.Lally@minuchincenter.org if special accommodation is required.
Conflict of Interest:
☐ There is no known commercial support for this program
☐ There are no known conflicts of interests for this workshop
Continuing Education Credits
☐ CE-Classes.com is the provider of CEs.
☐ Certificates are awarded online after completion of the workshop. Participants print their own certificate after registering at CE-Classes.com, entering a keycode, and completing an evaluation form.
☐ See list of approvals below. If not listed here, Licensed Professionals should contact their regulatory board to determine course approval.
CE-Classes.com is approved by: