Opening the Relationship: Couple and Family Therapy with Alternative Family Structures and Polyamorous Relationships

Recorded Webinar
Instructor:  Shannon L. Sennott, LICSW, CST
CEs: 2 CEs 
Level: Intermediate
Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.
Course Delivery Method and Format: Recorded webinar, self study. All courses are hosted on SmithOnline. Login information will be emailed immediately after registration to the email address entered during registration.
System Requirements: Attendees will need access to a computer with internet and the capability to play recorded videos.

Date of original webinar: March 11, 2021

The Alternative Family Structures Approach (AFSA), created by Shannon Sennott, is an eight-session foundational guide for clinicians who are working with clients who wish to be in consensually non-monogamous relationships or redefine their family structure to include other emotional, sexual, or intimate partnerships. This workshop leads clinicians through the eight-session arc, offering therapeutic tools and structures to make meaning and create shared language about things that have only previously existed in unspoken forms for clients. 

The AFSA approach is general enough that it can support all kinds of variations and constellations of relationship orientations and structures. This approach supports a partnership that is considering opening their relationship after years of being monogamous, or relationships that are having difficulty finding compromises within their polyamorous commitment that is already present, and all that lies in between and beyond. We remind clients that these are often not skills of communication that were learned as an early blueprint in families of origin for clients. Therefore, it can be helpful to have a therapist attune to the meta-communication of the partnership while working within a structured approach, to aid partnerships in finding language and agreements that meet everyone in the relationships’ needs.

The Alternative Family Structures Approach has an assessment component and an agreement planning component. AFSA is founded on transfeminist and feminist thought, social justice frameworks and principles of allyship (Sennott, 2011, Smith & Sennott, 2011). AFSA can be understood as a lens for other therapeutic models and orientations (i.e., CBT, DBT, Individual, Group or Family Treatment). AFSA is designed for affirming clinical treatment with polyamorous, consensually non-monogamous and open relationship systems.

Registration Fees and Deadlines:

$45 (one time registration fee of $5) | Ongoing

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify relational crises and risks in a partnership before conducting a sexual and intimate history assessment. 
2. Describe the process of taking a sexual and intimate history and be able to prepare a client for this assessment.
3. List five aspects of supporting clients in agreement planning, contracting and commitments.

Outline:

• Noon - 12:15 p.m. ET: Introduction to Alternative Family Systems Approach
• 12:15 - 12:30 p.m. ET: Relationship assessment and love story
• 12:30 - 12:45 p.m. ET: Relationship foundations and structures
• 12:45 - 1 p.m. ET: Quality and quantity of romantic and intimate connection in relationship
• 1 - 1:20 p.m. ET: Sexual History Assessment
• 1:20 - 1:40 p.m. ET: Agreement planning and commitments
• 1:40 - 2:00 p.m. ET: Wrap-up and questions

About the Instructor:

Shannon L. Sennott, LICSW, CST, is the co-founder of Translate Gender, Inc. and the Center for Psychotherapy and Social Justice, she was clinically trained at the Smith College School for Social Work and the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society in New York City, and is an AASECT certified sex therapist. Sennott is an adjunct faculty member at the Smith College School for Social Work, teaching family theory and sex theory Sennott alsomaintains a full time private practice at the Center for Psychotherapy and Social Justice in Northampton, Massachusetts. Sennott utilizes a transfeminist therapeutic approach in her work with individuals, adolescents and families, her interests extend to working with couples, consensually non-monogamous and polyamorous relationships and groups, and she especially enjoys working with those in alternative family structures. Her clinical orientation is influenced by both narrative therapy and dialogic practice traditions. Sennott’s  published paper in Women and Therapy Journal, introduces her transfeminist therapeutic approach, Gender Disorder as Gender Oppression: A Transfeminist Approach to Rethinking the Pathologization of Gender Non-Conformity. More recently, Sennott delivered the keynote for the Ackerman Institute for the Family annual conference in 2018 and she is enjoying clinically supervising and training other clinicians, institutions and organizations in their work with erotically marginalized people.  Her recent publication with Routledge Books is titled, Sex Therapy with Erotically Marginalized Clients: Nine Principles of Clinical Support.