Foster Care Training

Providers are in the position of providing essential support to parents and caregivers who are the front lines of helping youth whose emotional vulnerability brought on by an invalidating environment and/or childhood trauma lead to problematic behavior. Dialectical Behavior Strategies provides skills that can be relevant to caregivers so that they can parent more effectively and less emotionally, allowing parents/caregivers to provide a healthy environment in which their children can learn how to manage their emotions and behaviors and lead healthier, safer lives. In this presentation, providers will learn how to engage parents/caregivers in a supportive environment, one that models the skills the parents will be using at home, to help them build the skills necessary for effective parenting. This will be followed by a presentation of concepts related to mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, behavioral principles, dialectics and its application in services with the goal of improving the caregiver/child relationship. The presenter will highlight how the integration and application of these concepts can lead to improved outcomes including the ability to regulate emotions, manage stress and relate to other people in productive and healthy ways. This presentation will enhance the ways in which providers support caregivers to parent youth who have intense emotions and problematic behaviors. This presentation will include anecdotes, examples of skills and experiential learning.

Pat Harvey LCSW-C, ACSW has over 35 years of experience providing clinical social work services to individual and families. The focus of her unique practice now is providing DBT skills groups and individual coaching solely to parents and other family members of youth and adults who have emotional challenges. She facilitates trainings and workshops for mental health professionals on DBT concepts, skills, and family/parent interventions throughout the United States and at national and international conferences. Pat Harvey is the co-author of Parenting a Child Who Has Intense Emotions, Dialectical Behavior Therapy for At-Risk Adolescents, Hey, I’m Here Too! A Book for Tween/Teen Siblings of a Young Person with Emotional Issues and Parenting a Teen Who Has Intense Emotions. In addition, she has co-authored a 2008 article in the Journal of Family Social Work about the grief of parents who have a child with mental illness and a 2014 article for Pediatric Nursing about the concept of validation.