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Available for continuing education credits or graduate credit.
This flexible program is designed with the working professional in mind. Each course can be taken as a stand-alone workshop or online course, and the workshops are also video streamed for those unable to come to campus. Courses can now also be taken for graduate credit. Look for the credit option below.
For mental health therapists, a full postgraduate certificate of completion can be earned by completing all workshops, online courses, case consultation, and other program components. Case consultation is a unique skill-building opportunity for therapists to integrate learning with the course instructor following the workshop. All courses are offered one time per year. Professionals can enter the program at any time during the year. Mental health therapists completing the full certificate of completion have two years to finish all coursework and program requirements.
See the Certificate Info link on the left for complete certificate requirements.
Training formats include face-to-face sessions held at Portland State University’s downtown Portland campus, and online courses using Blackboard. The face-to-face sessions are video streamed and accessible “live” or can be viewed later. See the Technical Requirements page for more information. Instructors are national, regional, and local experts in the fields of mental health, adoption, and foster care. See the Faculty page for instructor bios.
2009-10 Workshops, Courses, and Case Consultations
September Workshop: Overview of Adoption and the Oregon Child Welfare System (7 CEU hours)*
By its very nature, adoption involves a dynamic array of systems, including governmental, institutional, and legal bureaucracies. This session addresses the impact those systems have. Topics include Child Protective Services (CPS), juvenile court oversight of DHS and families, Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), sibling policy, permanency planning and the Oregon Safety Model. Learn about the placement stages: selecting families, adoption committees, transitioning children, finalization process, and post adoption services. Explore how DHS, therapists, and families can work together to assist in making placements successful. A dynamic panel shares the real impact of these processes on their families.
September Workshop: Central Elements of Preserving Placements (5.5 CEU hours)*
This session examines the central elements of placement (adoption and foster care) preservation and effective response to families in crisis, including de-escalating child behavior problems. Learn about the common dynamics in troubled placements and how to intervene on multiple levels to assist children in developing an integrated, positive sense of self. This training explores the factors that are most likely to cause challenges for children and their families such as the impact of trauma, loss, and identity issues, and how these issues evolve over the course of the child’s development. It addresses interventions that promote family functioning, including using life storybooks in therapy and enhancing attachments in adoptive and permanent foster families.
*September Credit Option: Overview of Adoption and Child Welfare: Systems and Placement Issues (1 credit)
Attend the two September workshops listed above and then complete the accompanying credit assignments.
October Online Course: Clinical Practice with Adoptive and Foster Families (10 CEU hours/1 credit)*
Adopted and foster children enter the family with a unique history, including their experience with and connection to their birth family, siblings, genetic background, and specific resiliencies. This class considers how adoption impacts all members of the family system throughout their lives. Adoptive parents go through a unique process in order to become parents, often without the support and sanctions that are available for biological parents. The adopted child has at least two families and thus may experience a chronic tension between belonging to one or to the other.
This class explores the core clinical issues: attachment and bonding, loss and grief, divided loyalties, identity, issues of control, and entitlement and gratitude. These core clinical issues are considered across the developmental stages. It introduces some therapeutic techniques for working with families and uses case vignettes to illustrate. Participants gain a fuller understanding of the importance of competent practice in working with families affected by adoption.
**Graduate credit option: complete all activitess for the online course and also the credit assignments
November Workshop: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) and Other Drug Effects (5.5/7 CEU hours)*
Professionals and parents must first understand the link between brain development and behavior before they can develop skills to support children who have neurological challenges. Recent research confirms that abuse, neglect, and trauma can impact a child’s brain. Likewise, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) and other alcohol and drug-related neurological disorders can shape a child’s behavior and relationships. This class identifies the common phenomenon of children accumulating numerous DSM diagnoses, such as autism, ADD/ADHD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It suggests that the greater the number of diagnoses, the greater the likelihood of underlying brain involvement. Explore the importance of identifying FASD to assist families in reframing behaviors and understanding primary and secondary behavioral symptoms. Learn skills for coaching families to develop accommodations for their neurologically impaired child.
November Workshop: The Impact of Abuse, Trauma, and Neglect on Child Neurodevelopment (5.5 CEU hours)*
Exciting new brain research indicates that positive relationships can rewire and repair the damage from trauma, abuse, and alcohol/drug-related neurological disorders. Compare normal childhood development and its tasks with development clouded by abuse, neglect, and trauma. Learn about intervention strategies such as affect regulation, Circle of Security, sensory integration, early identification of neurodevelopmental profile risk, parent education on expected behavioral/developmental patterns, the role of psychopharmacological interventions, and, most importantly, the healing power of relationships. Identify specialized parenting skills to promote positive neurological progress.
*November Credit Section: Impacts of Alcohol, Drugs, Trauma, and Neglect on Child Neurodevelopment (1 credit)
Attend the two November workshops listed above and then complete the accompanying credit assignments.
January Online course: Attachment and Bonding (10 CEU hours/1 credit)*
Attachment issues are endemic to children who have experienced abuse and neglect. This course presents attachment-oriented theory, addresses how to diagnose reactive attachment disorder (RAD), and explores the various interventions mental health professionals can offer to parents to facilitate their child's attachment. This course also describes children’s attachment styles and the experiences that may have colored those styles, including infant and international adoptions. Explore the issues of adult attachment difficulties and how they interface with the child's attachment style. Learn to think more carefully about some of the problems that are often misdiagnosed and therefore mistreated. Explore the concept of “normative crises,” the normal transitions in adopted and foster children’s lives that trigger old loss issues. Psychoeducation can help parents normalize behaviors, reduce symptoms, and promote attachment.
**Graduate credit option: complete all activites for the online course and also the credit assignments.
February Workshop: Trauma and Dissociative Disorders: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Intervention (5.5/7 CEU hours)*
Trauma and traumatic stress can directly affect the development of affect regulation and empathy in children. In this class, learn to distinguish between the various trauma and dissociative disorders as listed in the DSM-IV and examine the effects of trauma on children. Understand the hyperarousal continuum and the dissociative continuum. Some of the important elements and goals of trauma treatment include de-condition harmful emotional responses and work to build a new internal self-view. This class builds on the previous Impact of Abuse class by continuing to explore the brain and trauma, including the hopeful new work in neuroplasticity. It includes extensive coverage of treatment approaches and coaching strategies for work with parents.
February Workshop: Promoting Positive Sexual Development Following Abuse (5.5/7CEU hours)*
The Oregon Department of Human Services reports that many children who are adopted or in foster care have been sexually abused. This training explores the impact of sexual abuse on children throughout their development. The aftermath of sexual abuse affects the child but also has a significant impact on the adoptive or foster family. This training introduces research-based practices and interventions to assist families in facilitating positive sexual development following the aftermath of sexual abuse, including interventions for trauma-related behaviors, promoting positive sexual identification, and coaching parents to promote healthy relationships to increase well being and minimize problem behaviors. Consideration is given to selecting and preparing families for parenting children recovering from sexual abuse and creating safety plans.
*February Credit Section: Promoting Positive Development Following Trauma, Dissociative Disorders, and Sexual Abuse (1 credit)
Attend the two February workshops listed above and then complete the accompanying credit assignments.
March Online workshop: Clinical Practice with Diverse Adoptive and Foster Families (10 CEU hours/1 credit)
Issues of difference, identity, and belonging affect adopted children and adoptive parents alike. Adoptive parents may feel they are different from biological parents because of the circumstances surrounding adoption. Children feel confusion because of their histories and connections to two families. The differences may be compounded by additional issues brought on by transracial or transcultural adoptions, adoption by gay or lesbian couples, single parents, and adoption by a child’s relatives. Diversity is a major theme of adoption given the demographics of children needing families, changing family forms, and globalization of adoption. In the public child welfare system, waiting children are disproportionately children of African American and Native American heritage. Clinicians need tools to tailor their interventions to the cultural, social, and familial dynamics that shape the family’s experiences.
This course presents a framework for understanding diverse families. Topics include identity, the impact of social stigma on the functioning of the family, the subtle social and environmental issues that affect the stability of adoption, the cultural context of diverse families, and the dynamics of relative adoptions. The professionals also explore their own identity, background, and potential biases that may impact their work.
**Graduate credit option: complete all activites for the online course and also the credit assignments.
April Online Course: Family-Based Therapeutic Strategies: Coaching Adoptive and Foster Parents (10 CEU hours/1 credit)*
Often adopted and foster children exhibit behavioral challenges, learning disorders, and other special needs that defy traditional parenting techniques, tax educational and social services, and exact a toll on the child and family. This session provides a detailed framework for understanding significant behavioral problems and relationship difficulties in special-needs adoptions. Emphasis is placed on practical ways for mental health providers to consult with adoptive and foster parents on dealing with classic problems such as food issues/eating disorders, lying, stealing, bedwetting, encopresis, sleep problems, anger outbursts, fire setting, and parentified behavior. This session focuses on understanding behavior problems in the context of the child’s history of past exposure to maltreatment and to dysfunctional family roles. This session provides numerous case examples and illustrative interventions.
**Graduate credit option: complete all assignments for the online course and also the credit assignments.
May Workshop: Putting Adoption/Foster Care Therapy into Practice (14 CEU hours)*
This two-day workshop provides best practices for professionals working with families raising children with many complicated issues. This class applies the concepts and skills learned throughout the program, including practical, yet flexible ways to integrate children into their new families. The overlapping themes between grief and trauma are addressed: hypervigilance, avoidance of loss, and anger and guilt. Develop home and school approaches that encourage children to flourish even after trauma and neglect. Participants learn protocols for family centered therapy for this specialty population, including the development and implementation of treatment plans. Adoptive and foster families need professionals who thoroughly prepare and support them – not just through the placement/adoption process but also as the family grows.
NOTE: This course is mandatory for therapists earning a certificate but can be taken by other therapists. It is not open to child welfare professionals. It is highly recommended that all previous courses be completed prior to this class.
The prerequisite for this course is completion of at least five classes (three workshops and two online courses). Both Friday and Saturday must be completed together. It is also highly recommended that this class be taken face to face to increase the opportunities for practice discussions. However, it is available via video streaming.
*May Credit Section: Putting Adoption/Foster Care Therapy into Practice (1 credit)
Attend the two-day May workshop and then complete the accompanying credit assignments.