An educational program for therapists sponsored by Jonah Green and Associates, LLC
For CE or Supervision Credit; Certification Available
“Couple and Family Therapy Training through Role-Play” is an online educational program for licensed therapists that teaches couples and family therapy skills through role-playing. Couple and family training has incorporated role-play for over 50 years and is consistent with the systematic skill-building methods of Deliberate Practice training, which have broad empirical support (https://www.dpfortherapists.com/inner-skills-intro).
The program consists of weekly 1.5-hour sessions wherein participants obtain support for cases and build family therapy skills. Each session includes didactic material and a case presentation, followed by role-playing exercises. Attendees alternate between the roles of therapist, clients, and observers who provide supportive feedback.
Sessions occur on Sundays from 1-2:30 PM. The curriculum begins on October 3, 2021, and continues through the summer of 2022, but each session is a stand-alone learning experience wherein eligible clinicians may acquire Continuing Education or Supervision credit.
Participants who attend 30 of the 46 one and one/half-hour sessions per year and seven of the ten foundation sessions may obtain a Certificate in Advanced Couple and Family Therapy Skills. This program will repeat each year, so participants can receive the certificate even if they do not attend the required sessions in a given year.
Jonah Green, LCSW-C, and other clinicians at Jonah Green and Associates, LLC will be the primary facilitators. Jonah has over 25 years of experience as a child and family therapist. He has been trained via role-playing at the Philadelphia Child and Family Guidance Center and the Minuchin Center, among other venues. Jonah is a Registered Social Work Supervisor who offers official group supervision for LMSWs. Jonah Green and Associates, LLC is a Category 1 Continuing Education provider through the Maryland Board of Social Work.
The program’s cost is $80/session through August 2022. There is no additional cost to obtaining a certificate.
Course Curriculum–Weekly Topics
The first ten sessions cover foundational skills, and subsequent sessions focus on specific techniques, theories, populations, or circumstances. The facilitator may suggest non-required educational materials for reading or viewing outside the sessions to enhance learning.
Foundations
1. A framework for presenting cases
2. Planning initial sessions: the “flexible family therapy” approach
3. Joining, goal-setting, and confidentiality
4. Constructing and maintaining a safe environment
5. Stimulating systemic thinking
6. Self-as-therapist and the “therapeutic stance.”
7. Reframing
8. Enactments
9. Collaborative Problem-Solving
10. Skills for Termination
Strengths-Based Approaches
11. Strengths and Solution-Oriented Interventions
12. Play-Based Approaches and Involving Young Children
13. Working with Single Parents
14. Family Self-Esteem
Addressing the Issues in the Room: Experiential Approaches to Couples and Family Therapy
15. Experiential and Gestalt Techniques
16. Regulating Shame and Fear
17. Emotion-Focused Interventions
18. Deepening Conversation: Illuminating Underlying Feelings and Needs
19. Building Empathy and Mentalization
20. Grief and trauma
Couples Therapy
21. Couples Therapy: Best Practices
22. “Doubling” and other methods for generating collaborative conversation
23. Broaching taboos: sex and money
Directive Work within Unstable Systems
24. Psychoeducation and Confrontation
25. Stepfamilies
26. Separating and Divorcing Families
27. Setting boundaries
28. Abuse and Neglect
Working with Subsystems
29. Supporting parents
30. Sibling subsystems
31. Interpersonal approaches with Individual Teens and Young Adults
32. Families with Emerging Adults
33. Dyadic work with parents and children
34. Involving extended family, friends, and community members
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Families
35. Emotion Regulation and Behavior Management
36. “Homework”
37. Managing Safety concerns
38. CBT Interventions with Anxious and Depressed Children and Teens
Dealing with Difference
39. Cultural Humility
40. Disability and Mental Illness
41. Helping Families Interface with Larger Systems
42. Racism and Prejudice in the Room
43. LGBTQ+ families
Mindful-Based Approaches
44. Acceptance and Commitment Family Therapy
45. Mindful Self-Disclosure
46. Developing Family Mindfulness
