VIRTUAL TRAINING
Dates: Wednesday, & Thursday, September 24 - 25, 2025
Time: 9am – 5pm EST (One hour break for lunch)
Location: Online
Intended Audience: Child Welfare Professionals, Child and Family Support Professionals
Register Now (Registration closes 9/19/25)
Training Description:
Day One
Module 1: Using the Protective Factors to Overcome Challenges at Work (4‐hours)
The Strengthening Families™ Protective Factors are a powerful tool for keeping families strong and children safe, but they can also be deployed to solve almost any thorny problem or complex challenge. This module uses conversation technologies and interactive, experiential activities to surface issues that are sapping energy and causing frustration and burnout at work and then uses the Protective Factors to address them. Participants have an opportunity to re‐connect to their purpose and passion, feel supported by their colleagues, with more tools in their toolbox to thrive at work and in their work.
Module 2: Trauma‐Informed Supervisory Practice Part 1 (4‐hours)
Trauma impacts our wellbeing, whether the other people are our friends, our clients, our coworkers, or our family members. Learning how vicarious trauma affects us is the first step to improving our wellbeing and our ability to sustain positive relationships. This module begins with learning about and identifying our own signs of trauma exposure response and our emotional triggers. Supervisors practice strategies for de‐escalating their own and others’ emotional responses in the moment. Further, they learn a framework for reading and shifting their own and others’ energy to move into a positive relational zone. This module offers tools for increasing staff awareness, skills, and tools for understanding how to best respond when trauma or trauma history is in play. This module concludes by exploring the ways in which supervisory relationships can support a trauma‐responsive practice and how workers and supervisors can co‐create safe interpersonal space for reflection and skill‐building.
Day Two
Module 3: Trauma‐Informed Supervisory Practice Part 2 (4‐hours)
This experiential module takes off from where Part 1 (Module 2) left off by assuming reflective supervisory practice and diving deeper into what concrete coaching skills may be effectively deployed in these conversations. While effective supervisors may naturally and intuitively mobilize these techniques without having explicitly learned them, this module makes the implicit explicit. Supervisors have the opportunity to both learn about and practice coaching skills such as: asking appreciative, empowering questions; clarifying; goal setting; reframing; planting a seed; celebrating; affirming; validating; championing; asking permission; and active listening. This module is highly interactive, energizing, playful, and maximizes participants' creativity.
Module 4: The Art of Trauma‐Informed, Relationship‐Based Engagement (4‐hours)
Effective work with others depends on the supervisor’s ability to engage and partner. Utilizing an extended role‐play format, this experiential module for supervisors assists practitioners with developing empathy for their staff and in‐depth understanding of the challenges they face. It encourages self‐reflection as a foundation for strengthening their staff engagement skills while practicing the skills learned in previous modules. Be Strong Families works with agencies to customize this module for their program’s needs and the specific situations of their staff.
Trainers:
Brenda Kinsler, Senior Training and Technical Assistance Consultant, Be Strong Families & Ladonna Brown, Be Strong Families
www.bestrongfamilies.org
Additional Information: Participants that complete the full training will receive certificates of completion directly from Be Strong Families via email within two weeks after completing the training. This training does not qualify for CEUs.
