Continuing Education for your whole team
The benefits of affirmative continuing education are many and are more accessible with our group rate options. We are prepared to assist your clinic or group practice in becoming a leader in LGBTQIA+-, consensually non-monogamous-, and kink-affirmative community mental health.
Your professional community is tasked with an ambitious goal: to provide healing, recovery, and wellbeing to the people you serve. You may be clear on the clinical problems your clinic or practice address, but are you clear on the populations you serve? Are you prepared to serve everyone who walks in your door? You likely want to be, but with more people in sexuality-, gender-, and relationship-expansive communities seeking treatment, you may feel like you’re unprepared.
1. Affirmative CEs focuses on the community and culture of your clinic, organization, or practice
Your clinic has a living, breathing heartbeat of its own. Your organization has a history it has lived and a legacy it wants to leave. Establishing a community clinic or group practice takes work, patience, resources, and physical and emotional labor. Affirmative organizational consulting acknowledges all of that, and helps you expand your practice in new and important ways.
Sexuality-, gender-, and relationship-expansive community members have unique needs, and these clients can also benefit greatly from the unique ways in which you offer recovery, healing, and individual and community support. By spending time supporting your team’s affirmative skills, you can help you start feeling your heartbeat and establishing what makes you special, and using that to expand your practice to meet the needs of new communities.
2. Professional development that connects you with the mission and values of your clinic or practice
Your mission and values should reflect the work that is currently happening in your organization.
- Do your foundational documents still reflect the work you are doing today?
- Is your organization’s heartbeat aligned with the rhythm of your documented organizational values?
- Do these documents explicitly state that there is room for sexuality-, gender-, and relationship-expansive clients in your clinic?
- Is it clear to someone who has experienced minority stress or community exclusion that they can find comfort and healing in your therapy rooms?
3. Collective ongoing education helps uncover the common obstacles to affirmative care
Caplan & Caplan (1993) described four obstacles to providing effective mental health services: lack of knowledge, lack of skills, lack of confidence, and lack of objectivity. These limitations all pose ethical concerns according to the APA, and may serve as warning signs that it is time to consult with an outside professional. If you need more support beyond our course library, reach out to us! We are happy to develop an in service training tailored to your community’s needs!
4. Our group rates can help build your leadership role in new communities
Mission, Values, Narratives, Impact, Heartbeats. All really aspirational stuff. When we get down to business and develop goals, objectives, and activities that are congruent with your ideals and principles, you will need to invest time and possibly more money. Ongoing learning helps us discover all the things we didn’t know what we need to know. Letting your community know you’re engaging in ongoing continuing education with clinicians that have lived and professional experience in community lets your clients know where you stand. This will leave your team more confident, willing, and open to engage in the lifelong learning that becoming an affirmative therapist requires.
5. Flexibility for capacity building and organizational growth
Training to meet the needs of different populations, puts you in the position to open your doors to more members of those communities. Training your whole clinical team helps determine individual interests and niches within gender-, sexuality-, and relationship expansive communities. Your practice can clarify which communities you are prepared to serve. Ongoing affirmative training through our memberships, course library, or individualized in-services can help build your confidence and competence with more identity-centered communitites!
References
Brown, P (1995). The role of collaborator in comprehensive community initiatives. In J.P. Connell, A.C. Kubisch, L.B. Schorr, & C.H. Weiss (Eds.), New approaches to evaluating community initiatives: Concepts, methods, and contexts (pp. 201-25). Aspen Institute.
Caplan, G. & Caplan, R. (1999). Mental health consultation and collaboration. Jossey-Bass.
Morgan, K., Herbert, S., Dellens, M., Yang, C., Barr, T., Page, K., Finn, D., & Richards, J. (2020). A community narration assessment of master’s level psychology students at Antioch University Los Angeles. Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, 11(3), 1-13.
Motes, P. & Hess, P. (2006). Collaborating with community-based organizations through consultation and technical assistance. Columbia University Press.