Workshops & Training

We offer several economical yet comprehensive training experiences for direct service staff in health, education, social care and their agencies either virtually, in-person, or as a hybrid. Workshops are customized to fit agency and/or program needs.  Using the Zoom platform online learning is economical, easy to access, and provides a dynamic learning environment. 

Single Session Therapy

  • Single Session Therapy (SST) also known as One at a Time Therapy (OAATT) has emerged as an important pathway on the mental health service landscape. It provides a means to get efficient and effective service to people in their time of need, barrier free. Whether as part of a quick access (walk-in) clinic, call-ahead appointment service, primary care, in school and education institutions, crisis or live-in contexts, SST provides a viable means to foster hope and possibility regardless of the severity or duration of the presenting problem.

    This two day workshop thoroughly prepares participants to work in time constrained contexts. Material is explored through didactic presentation, video review, discussion and skills practice.

    Participant handouts are extensive and including sample documentation templates. Purchase an accompanying text Brief Narrative Practice in Single-Session Therapy.

  • This workshop will introduce participants to:

    • The key concepts SST coheres around inviting hope and possibility.

    • The process and accompanying structure from pre-session paperwork through to endings.

    • How to hear and expand entry points to preferred 'stories in the making’ out of the expression of distress.

    • Many questions to foreground possibility and difference that will shape action plans and next steps that are culturally and contextually relevant to people's lives.

Supervision Skills for SST

  • In single session therapy (SST) therapists face diverse circumstances and navigate ethical dilemmas within a limited time frame. The brief nature of single session therapy calls for a supervision in harmony with the shift in mindset and methodology that can assist with the unique aspects of the work. This workshop will provide a space for exploration and discussion of clinical supervision for SST.

    All those who provide supervision in psychotherapy, counselling, and coaching in time-constrained contexts will find this workshop useful and engaging, including those supervising in crisis and call-in settings, walk-in clinics, medical centres, and live-in contexts where change conversations are brief.

  • Together we’ll explore:

    • Situating the supervision within a meta-theory favourable to single session therapy.

    • A framework for session debriefs and scheduled supervision.

    • Conversations that discover supervisee’s skills, creativity and know-how.

    • Growing a supervision inclusive of a range of psychotherapy modalities.

    • An ethical stance for supervision that brings a focus on relational ethics.

Intake Conversations

  • Intake conversations can be one of the most stressful moments for people reaching out for services. As people are required to tell their story to get in the door for care these conversations can have effects on people leaving them mired in the problem story. For these reasons great responsibility lies with the intake conversationalist to assist people to be seen, experience safety, and join as active participants in the care process. 

    However, when also informed by the brief therapies, the intake conversation moves beyond information gathering to a dialogic, generative experience that can spark hope. The brief therapies foreground meaning making in these conversations, elicit and expand upon people’s competencies, and begin to talk about problems differently. Given this, the intake conversation starts change in motion and sets the stage for the next service. These conversations are where change begins.

  • ogether we’ll explore:

    • Common ideas shaping intake processes and a shift in mind-set favourable to change,

    • A process to foreground competency-focused experiences to inform change,

    • Various questions that elicit difference, possibility, and hope that can inform next steps,

    • A different way to talk about problems quickly making visible what helps already.

Advanced Single Session Therapy

  • It’s not unlikely that if you work in single session or quick access/walk-in therapy contexts you have had the experience of being taken to the ceiling of your skillset. You may have struggled to know how to proceed or have felt off course in the conversation. Those are not times to be disheartened but rather times in which we can see the people consulting to us as our unpaid teachers or supervisors. Those are the times, through reflection and practice, that we are invited to stretch our skills, develop our creativity, or perhaps explore undiscovered country in therapeutic conversations.

    This workshop provides a venue for you to further extend your therapeutic skills for single session therapeutic contexts. Working with segments of transcript, scenario discussions, and video review, we will explore options for proceeding amidst various levels of complexity. Participants will be introduced to a Practice Continuum assisting to make visible the tensions and pulls in single session conversations inviting critical reflection during the conversation or in review. We will also explore a quality assurance/outcome measure that holds us accountable to our practice intentions and further informs our own professional growth.

    It is recommended that participants have completed the introduction to single session therapy and have experience at walk-in clinics or other time-constrained contexts. This workshop can be tailored to address your agencies specific objectives.

  • Areas for exploration can include:

    • Exploring relational ethics and what this means to SST.

    • Navigating trauma conversations.

    • Re-conceptualizing the experience of crisis and exploring movement conversations.

    • Co-research in SST to elicit and circulate everyday know-how.

    • Ways to resist replicating the politics of culture in session.

    • Tailored topics such as separation/divorce, bullying, problemed eating, self-harm, parent – teen discrepancy.

Brief Narrative Therapy

  • For many years Michael White (co-founder of narrative therapy) had been demonstrating a brief narrative practice as he often provided live demonstrations of narrative therapy in training contexts.  That was a rare practice in the field but those demonstrations pushed our conception of what might be possible in narrative therapy especially in time constrained circumstances.     

    What is compelling about this therapy is a practice that is not separate from the politics of culture or therapy.  Particular attention is given to reflection about the effects of practice on the real lives of people.  How do our practices effect how people come to know themselves?  How do they effect people's experience of personal agency; the ability to make decisions in their own lives?  These questions become even more urgent under time constraint without the luxury of future conversations to track progress or amend mishaps.   

    A brief narrative practice involves collaboration and dialogue that seeks and activates people's own everyday knowledge to address their concerns as shared through the stories they tell.  These (local) knowledges, when brought into 'stories in the making' can be developed into proposals for action.  People  experience themselves as knowledged, with the skills and experiences that allow them to address their concern or to more fully step into preferred ways of living. 

  • Together we’ll explore:

    • The key concepts that inform brief narrative practice.  

    • Novel ways to hear and respond to expressions of distress.

    • Several maps of questions that generate preferred meaning.

    • Externalizing conversations that lead to the experience preferred identity.

    • A map for the co-development of next steps in life and action plans.

    The foundational skills for brief narrative therapy will be shared and demonstrated through video presentation. People will have time to practice these skills that can be taken into their practice immediately.

Navigators and Outreach

  • This series of workshops will share thinking and practice informed by contemporary brief therapies to assist Navigation and Outreach in their day-to-day service. There are three half day modules:

    DAY 1: Planting Seeds of Change

    This workshop will explore ways of meeting people and problems that is dignifying and hope friendly. Together we’ll explore and practice the kinds of questions that quickly introduce difference and invite people to experience themselves in preferred ways.

    Day 2: Navigating Escalated Participants

    On this day, we’ll explore ways to be with people who are barley coping, experience big emotions, or are mired in the problem story. This starts with highly tuning our ear to hear and corresponding responses to expressions of distress.

    DAY 3: Co-visioning, Co-Creating Next Steps

    During our final half day together, we’ll explore conversations that assist people to begin to vision their service pathway and the meaningful steps along the way. Lastly, participants will craft their own plan for on-going skill development and growth in their role. 

  • Together we’ll explore:

    • The understanding that every contact with service participants, from first phone call to service navigation, is an opportunity for people to experience themselves in preferred ways.

    • Ways to navigate conversations with those who are barely coping or experiencing big emotions.

    • Specific ways to listen and hear distress that opens possibility.

    • Ways to assist people to come up with ideas to try out right away.

Skill Integration Meetings (SIIMS)

  • PURPOSE

    Many agencies will book a series of skill-integration and implementation meetings (SIIMS) as part of their implementation strategy.

    Skill integration meetings provide a collective space to further explore practice and the skills fitting with single session, brief therapy contexts. It’s a time to hear from colleagues as well about successes or challenges and to explore practices together. This is a group format for up to 10 participants.

Single Session Skills for Schools

  • Educators, support staff, and mental health professionals play a vital role in assisting and shoring up students in these ever-increasing stressful times. Common approaches that focus on “identifying the problem” and “trying to get students to change”, while seemingly sensible, can be disheartening as a problem focus prevails. A revised mindset is needed.

    The single session therapy mind-set is a useful fit for the school context helping to get the most out of every moment with learners. It fosters an approach to change conversations that focus on competencies, foregrounding what learners and their circle of care already know and know how to do that can be put to use to address what they are facing. Rather than trying to teach new behaviours or solve a problem, practice involves building off what works, even a little bit, where students will experience their small successes and grow a sense that they can shape their lives.

    This workshop will provide an introduction to the SST mind-set and accompanying practices for educators and mental health professionals who work with children and youth in school contexts. The focus of our time will be learning practical skills to facilitate conversations that support difference and change.

  • Learning Objectives:

    Together we’ll explore:

    • The shift in mindset favourable to working in time constraint,

    • Ways to elicit and build off the many skills and abilities students bring with them to these situations,

    • A different way to talk about problems that opens new possibilities and fosters cooperation.