Schedule

This interactive presentation will identify the antiracist adaptations of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), a treatment developed for individuals with disorders of emotion regulation, suicidality, and self-harming behavior (Linehan, 1993), which includes four components: phone coaching, skills training, individual therapy, and a consultation team.

DBT has been adapted across multiple settings and for specific populations; this interactive presentation focuses on what an antiracist clinical practice looks like: 1) a therapist’s race-specific awareness of their values, beliefs, and attitudes, 2) knowledge, 3) skills, and 4) advocacy.

It will also examine therapist treatment-interfering racist behaviors: Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills Deficit, and identify strategies for increasing antiracism in DBT. The levels of validation and invalidation will also be explored to enhance competency.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the four components of Adherence Dialectical Behavior Therapy and the consultation team’s adaptation to include an antiracism agreement.
• Increase understanding of what an antiracist clinical practice looks like.
• Explore the levels of validation and invalidation in clinical work.

Target Audience 

Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

Peer-led navigation programs are increasingly recognized as essential bridges between underserved communities and systems of care. Drawing from real-world examples within the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, including the Court-Based Navigator Initiative and Neighborhood Navigator Initiative, this session explores how Peer Navigators with lived experience of the justice system, homelessness, substance use, or mental illness can transform engagement within large, historically non-clinical institutions. Although these peers are not clinically trained professionals, their lived experience positions them as powerful relational anchors capable of reaching people that traditional systems routinely fail to serve.

At the same time, peer workforces face unique vulnerabilities, including trauma activation, burnout, relapse risk, and over-identification, that require thoughtful clinical structures to ensure safety, sustainability, and growth. This session examines how clinical social workers can help design, supervise, and sustain peer programs inside systems led by judges, lawyers, police, and other professionals unfamiliar with behavioral health frameworks. We will explore how these lessons can translate to other settings where social workers practice.

Through case examples from the justice system, reflective discussion, and collaborative problem-solving, participants will explore strategies to support peer workforces and advance systems change. Whether working in legal, medical, educational, or community environments, social workers have a unique capacity to integrate clinical insight with advocacy and organizational design, and this session equips participants to do both.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the clinical value of integrating peers with lived experience into behavioral health and legal systems, including potential risks and vulnerabilities.
• Identify at least three strategies that support peer staff working in high-stress systems.
• Evaluate own organizational context and identify opportunities to enhance role clarity, boundaries, and workforce development pathways for peer staff.
   

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

This presentation will discuss lesser-known symptoms and behaviors of eating disorders, including but not limited to food rituals, purging through exercise, and sensory-related food avoidance. The spectrum of disordered eating to clinical eating disorders will also be reviewed, as many people in our society engage in disordered eating, and I believe it is worth reviewing at one point that disordered eating begins to cause clinical levels of distress or interruption to one's life. I will discuss the various underlying functions of these eating disorder behaviors from a psychodynamic perspective, as well as therapeutic interventions that generalists and practitioners of other specialties can apply confidently. I will review when to refer out to a specialist, recommend a higher level of care, or add adjunct members to clients’ treatment to ensure medical safety. Lastly, I will review identity and experience-based risk factors for eating disorder development (including how eating disorder behaviors can be a way to manage gender dysphoria) and how systemic fatphobia often enables non-specialist providers to inadvertently miss screening for and treating active eating disorders, particularly for people in midsize or larger bodies.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to name at least three commonly known and at least three lesser-known eating disorder symptoms.
• Participants will leave with numerical and behavioral parameters indicating when to refer to a higher level of care or add an adjunctive therapist to the client's team.
• Participants will be able to name at least three risk factors in eating disorder development.
• Participants will be able to name at least three underlying functions of eating disorder behaviors.

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

The foundation of narrative therapy is to support clients in “re-authoring” their life stories, including how traumatic experiences shape their worldview and relationships with animals. This approach emphasizes externalizing the problem while integrating an understanding of sociocultural influences and family interpersonal violence to foster mastery and meaning-making. For clients who have witnessed maltreatment of humans or animals, or who have perpetrated animal abuse, an effective intervention may involve co-creating a successful narrative through supervised human–animal interactions and somatic-based therapeutic approaches.

As described by Blaustein and Kinniburgh (2010), narrative creation involves the integration of felt experience and reflective processing across neural systems. This presentation explores the integration of human–animal and animal-themed interventions within a somatic-based framework informed by interpersonal neurobiology for individuals affected by animal abuse and/or family violence. Drawing on the AniCare Model for Children (Randour et al., 1999), animal-assisted intervention models (Nicoll, 2006), trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (Cohen et al., 2006), and trauma- and attachment-informed principles of polyvagal theory (Marks-Tarlow, 2017; Sanders et al., 2021), this approach supports the development of both trauma and successful narratives. Through storytelling and embodied awareness, clients build accountability, resilience, affect regulation, and cognitive processing of traumatic experiences while fostering empathy and healthier attachments with animals.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to identify three theoretical principles that drive our connection to animals and the healing benefits of the human-animal studies.
• Participants will be able to discuss how the four human-animal interactions of attachment, affect regulation, affirmation, and attunement, in the Nicoll Model of Animal Assisted Therapy, impact our relationship with animals.
• Participants will be able to apply two interpersonal neurobiology and polyvagal principles in human-animal interactions.

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

Since the 1940's, Social Work has played a key role in the development of policies and practices in adoption. However, many of these have been based on unstudied assumptions of another era, inadequate training, and varying qualifications of the workforce. Most troubling, the trend in adoptive placements has been to accommodate the desires of the adults seeking to adopt rather than prioritizing the needs of each child. This has contributed to complex developmental and clinical problems in a subgroup of adopted persons when they become adolescents and adults. Both the adoption and the mental health cultures have been 'developmentally arrested' in viewing adoption as (only) about children, in neglecting the unique emotional needs of adopted adolescents and young adults, and in failing to keep up with recent research findings, especially in neuroscience. Adopted persons have an alternate development in many areas, thus requiring alternate treatment approaches. But currently, therapists either treat adopted patients no differently from any others or they use versions of "trauma and attachment" modalities that do not fit the unique circumstances of adopted clients. With its systemic knowledge base, psychodynamically-based Clinical Social Work is especially qualified to alter these trends by further developing the psychology and treatment of adopted persons as an advanced clinical specialty. This workshop will review theoretical, systemic, and clinical problems, and also the urgent need for clinically-focused research.

Learning Objectives:

• Re-evaluate the classical ideas of childhood development from the twentieth century that were entirely based on children who were never separated from their biological mothers.
• Learn of the flaws in adoption policy and practice that have contributed to difficulties, many of which can be serious, in adopted persons into adulthood.
• Recognize the reasons that therapists treating adopted persons need to be well-informed in early childhood development and in the Psychology of Being Adopted.
• Identify developmental and clinical issues that distinguish adopted individuals from the non-adopted and from those previously from foster care;
• Identify the multiple clinical challenges in the treatment of all adopted clients, including knowing which questions to ask.

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

This workshop provides social work practitioners, clinicians, and community professionals with practical strategies for delivering culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and client-centered care. Participants will explore how culture, identity, and systemic factors, including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and historical trauma, shape clients’ experiences and influence clinical outcomes. The session emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, encouraging participants to reflect on personal biases, assumptions, and power dynamics that may affect the helping relationship.

Through case examples, discussion, and interactive exercises, attendees will learn to engage clients with cultural humility, deepen their understanding of their worldview, and incorporate clients’ cultural strengths into assessment, treatment planning, and intervention. The workshop also addresses systemic and structural factors, highlighting the impact of community, institutional, and societal influences on mental health and wellness.

By bridging clinical expertise with cultural awareness, this session equips participants to provide inclusive and effective care, enhance client trust, and support resilience. Participants will leave with practical tools, reflective frameworks, and strategies they can immediately apply in their professional practice, fostering equity, respect, and empowerment across diverse populations.

Learning objectives:

• Develop Self-Awareness: Participants will identify personal biases, assumptions, and areas for growth to enhance cultural humility in clinical practice.
• Apply Culturally Responsive Strategies: Participants will learn practical approaches to engage clients from diverse cultural backgrounds, integrating clients’ values, experiences, and strengths into assessment and intervention.
• Understand Systemic and Structural Influences: Participants will examine how historical, social, and institutional factors impact clients’ experiences and outcomes, and learn strategies to address these influences in their practice.

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

Clinicians working with Black boys and men frequently encounter behaviors that are quickly interpreted as symptoms of pathology, when many of these presentations are actually adaptive responses to chronic stress, environmental threat, and racialized trauma. This workshop offers a depth-oriented clinical framework that helps practitioners differentiate disorder from survival, integrating applied neuroscience, contextual formulation, and a nuanced understanding of

racialized stress responses. Together, we will examine how hypervigilance, emotional guardedness, reactivity, shutdown, and other common presentations can function as neurobiologically reinforced protective strategies. Participants will explore how systemic oppression, community violence, under-resourced environments, historical trauma, and identity-based threat shape the nervous system and influence symptom expression across development. Using Kenneth Bourne’s NeuroSystems Framework and the complementary Symptoms Live in Systems lens, this session provides clinicians with a structured approach to assessing whether behaviors represent impairment, adaptation, or both.

Through case examples, reflective exercises, and small-group discussion, we will deepen clinical insight and expand the capacity to hold complexity in diagnostic thinking. Clinicians will learn how to develop culturally grounded formulations, avoid misdiagnosis, strengthen attunement, and support therapeutic engagement with clients whose survival strategies have long been misunderstood or pathologized. This workshop is designed to enhance ethical, relational, and contextually informed practice

Learning objectives:

• Differentiate trauma-generated survival responses from diagnosable disorders when assessing Black boys and men.
• Analyze how systemic, environmental, and racialized stressors shape neurobiological and behavioral patterns.
• Apply a contextual, healing-centered framework to clinical assessment and treatment planning.
• Evaluate clinician assumptions and biases that contribute to misdiagnosis or misinterpretation of adaptive behavior.

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

Recent political unrest, shifts in leadership and governance, and disruptions to social policies are having reverberating effects on individuals and communities. From everyday political discussions to explorations of historical and intergenerational trauma linked to one’s society, social work clinicians are encountering a wide range of dynamics in clinical spaces and relationships. Using vignettes, this session will explore four ways political concerns may emerge in clinical work, while recognizing their intersections:

• Individuals discussing politics and exploring underlying meaning-making and representations.
• Direct worry about, and the real impact of, policies on individuals, families, and communities, including ways to attend to immediate effects, build capacity and community, and explore meaning.
• Current political events are triggering past and ongoing trauma, deepening awareness of the interconnected nature of interpersonal, collective, historical, and contemporary trauma and survivance.
• Relational dynamics that mirror political dynamics, or vice versa, including the somatic impact of a dysregulated society and ways to engage mindful practices, explore embodied experiences, and identify resources.

In this highly participatory workshop, participants may add additional categories and work in small groups to engage in exploratory critical dialogue that further delineates these experiences.

Guiding questions (among others generated by participants) include:

• How do psychological and social theories guide our understanding of, and interventions related to, political content and processes?
• Are there novel approaches that clinicians are finding useful and effective?
• What relational elements (e.g., transference and countertransference, co-regulation, use of self, affect, cognition, somatics, and existential experience) are most salient, and how do they inform clinical processes?

Learning objectives:

• Participants will explore and increase awareness of the ways in which political content and processes are active in their clinical practice and therapeutic relationships with clients.
• Participants will identify various approaches and theories to inform meaning-making, direction, and action in clinical practice when addressing the immediate and historical effects of political processes.
• Participants will develop a deeper understanding of relational dynamics in the context of political content and processes in clinical practice.

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

High-achieving women often excel professionally, yet they face profound challenges when recovering from relationships with narcissistic partners. This course provides a trauma-informed framework to help clinicians, educators, and leaders support women in identifying, processing, and overcoming relational abuse. Sage Breslin, Ph.D., will guide participants through a four-pillar recovery model: Awareness (recognizing narcissistic patterns), Deconstruction (challenging self-limiting beliefs), Reconstruction (building self-efficacy and healthy boundaries), and Integration (applying strategies for sustainable empowerment). Through case studies, interactive exercises, and evidence-based approaches, participants will learn practical tools for assessment, intervention, and client support. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies they can implement immediately in therapeutic, educational, or leadership contexts, promoting resilience, authentic self-leadership, and long-term recovery outcomes.

Learning objectives:

• Identify narcissistic relational patterns and understand their psychological impact on high-achieving women.
• Apply trauma-informed strategies to support recovery, rebuild self-efficacy, and establish healthy boundaries.
• Integrate recovery practices into daily or professional life to foster long-term resilience and empowerment.

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5

This session explores the often-avoided subject of wealth and social class in clinical work with children living in poverty. Mental health professionals frequently focus on tangible needs without recognizing how their own economic status and unconscious beliefs influence therapeutic relationships.

The session begins by introducing “money scripts”—unconscious belief systems about wealth. Participants will learn the origins of these scripts and the four script types: money avoidance, money worship, money status, and money vigilance. Participants will then explore their positionality, including experiences with money, earned and unearned privilege, and social class. They may choose to pair up to share or to reflect privately through writing. This experiential exercise allows participants to begin identifying their feelings about wealth and to become curious about how these may manifest in therapeutic interactions.

The clinical portion uses intersubjectivity, rooted in psychodynamic theory (Winnicott, Kohut, Sullivan), to explore the shared therapeutic experience. How do therapists experience themselves and their clients when the uncomfortable topic of money arises? How might clients experience themselves and the therapist in these discussions? What are the pitfalls of over- or under-identifying with clients? Special focus will be given to how children express themes about money through play, with consideration of child and adolescent development. The course concludes with the presentation and discussion of three to five vignettes depicting challenging interactions around money with children and parents.

Learning objectives:

• Participants will demonstrate awareness of Money Scripts (Klonsky) and increase their ability to reflect on their thoughts and feelings about money.
• Participants will explore their positionality about money, earned/unearned privilege, and social class.
• Participants will increase their ability to identify and “hold” anxiety, guilt, or shame in themselves and a child/parent client.
• Participants will gain knowledge about psychodynamic intersubjectivity using theoretical material from Kohut, Sullivan, and Winnicott.
• Participants will be able to describe the distinction between ‘subject’ vs. ‘other’.
• Participants will demonstrate the ability to examine intersubjective material between the child/parent client and therapist pertaining to wealth, poverty, and social class.
• Participants will demonstrate awareness that child/adolescent development can influence play and discussions about money.

Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.

CEs: 1.5