Engaging Youth and Families Impacted by Substance Use: A Solution-Focused Approach

This 12-hour comprehensive continuing education course provides practical, skill-based training in engaging youth and families impacted by substance use using a Solution-Focused approach. Designed for clinicians and interdisciplinary professionals who want tools they can use immediately, the course integrates 8 in-depth lectures, 23 video demonstrations, written materials, and structured clinical practice exercises to show how solution-focused conversations unfold in real-world substance use treatment settings.

Concerns about youth substance use often arise in the context of strained family relationships, uncertainty about change, and involvement with schools, courts, or child-welfare systems. Engaging youth and families in these circumstances, particularly when people are ambivalent, externally referred, or hesitant to participate, requires approaches that build therapeutic alliance, support safety, and strengthen agency.

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) offers an evidence-based, practical, and strengths-based approach for this work.

Across individual, family, and group contexts, participants observe solution-focused conversations as they unfold in real-world substance use treatment settings. Through extensive video demonstrations, participants see how Solution-Focused Brief Therapy questions are asked, refined, and sequenced, using people’s own language to invite engagement, highlight strengths, and keep conversations moving toward client-identified goals and what matters most to them.

The course provides a clear, structured framework for applying Solution-Focused language and practices, helping participants translate what they observe into consistent, effective work across sessions and settings.

Participants learn solution-focused strategies to:

• Build engagement with youth and families who are ambivalent or externally referred
• Support agency and coping amid substance use, trauma, and ongoing stress
• Strengthen safety and recovery using engagement-focused assessment tools
• Sustain progress across relapse, chronic pain, and other complex, ongoing stressors

Designed for individual practitioners and interdisciplinary teams, this course is well-suited for professionals working in behavioral health, child welfare, schools, juvenile justice, healthcare, and integrated care settings.

Last Updated: February 2026

Target Audience:

• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Mental Health / Professional Counselors
• Licensed Clinical Addiction Counselors (or state-recognized addiction counseling professionals)
• Recovery Coaches / Peer Support Specialists
• Physicians, Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, and Nurses working in substance use or behavioral health settings

The Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy and all instructional personnel involved in this continuing education program have no relevant financial relationships or conflicts of interest to disclose. This course is presented for educational purposes only and is free from commercial support or product endorsement.

By the end of this program, participants will be able to:

Section One: Overview of Substance Use Disorders in Youth and Families

1. Describe substance use disorder as a serious, chronic health condition that begins in childhood or adolescence and impacts individuals, families, and communities.
2. Recognize how adolescent brain development, including asynchronous maturation of reward and impulse-control systems, increases vulnerability to substance use and addiction.
3. Distinguish key risk and protective factors for adolescent substance use, including family influences, developmental factors, and environmental context.
4. Differentiate evidence-based treatment approaches for adolescent and young adult substance use disorders, including integrated, family-based, and solution-focused interventions.
5. Identify how Solution-Focused practices support agency, emotional regulation, and trauma-informed care by emphasizing choice, strengths, and forward movement without requiring detailed trauma exploration.

Section Two: Overview of the Solution-Focused Approach

1. Differentiate the solution-building paradigm from problem-solving approaches by explaining how Solution-Focused Brief Therapy emphasizes client competence, strengths, and resources rather than weaknesses or deficits in substance use treatment conversations.
2. Analyze the order shift in Solution-Focused practice by identifying how beginning conversations with agency activation, coping, and existing resources influence client engagement and affect in early treatment.
3. Distinguish problem-focused language from Solution-Focused languaging by recognizing how word choice, verb tense, and presuppositional questions shape agency, meaning, and direction.
4. Identify observable language, agency, and affect shifts in video vignettes by recognizing how Solution-Focused questions alter client engagement, emotional tone, and self-described action in the first minutes of conversation.

Section Three: Agency Activation and Amygdala Whispering

1. Define amygdala whispering and identify its core components (emotional yes-set, “for you” statements, and indirect compliments) as strategies for calming emotional reactivity and supporting engagement in substance use–related interactions.
2. Differentiate between direct compliments and indirect compliments by selecting clinician statements that activate client agency and compassion in substance use–focused video vignettes.
3. Identify Solution-Focused lines of questioning that amplify positive differences by drawing attention to coping, effort, or small improvements in substance use–related vignettes.

Section Four: VIP Mapping in SUD

1. Define VIP Mapping and classify VIP categories in substance use treatment.
2. Identify Solution-Focused questions that elicit VIPs and relationship resources.
3. Explain how VIP Mapping improves engagement and motivation for clients affected by substance use.

Section Five: Best Hope Mapping in SUD

1. Identify the key elements of Best Hope Mapping in substance use treatment, including best hopes, client-defined meaning, and VIP perspectives.
2. Distinguish action-oriented, positive root verbs from problem-focused language when identifying client goals.
3. Select Solution-Focused questions that elicit best hopes and support engagement in substance use–related clinical scenarios.
4. Interpret how VIP, VIPP, and spiritual-VIP perspectives can broaden goal formulation and strengthen engagement in youth and family contexts.
5. Apply the Miracle Question to translate client hopes into observable and scalable behaviors.

Section Six: Solution-Focused Scaling in SUD

1. Classify scaling questions as Solution-Focused or problem-focused based on whether they assess coping, confidence, or managing versus symptom severity in substance use–related examples.
2. Choose solution-focused scaling questions that are anchored in a client’s stated best hopes and action-oriented verbs in brief substance use–related clinical scenarios.
3. Determine appropriate clinician follow-up questions for working the scale after a client gives a number by identifying responses that explore what keeps the number from being lower, what supports its current level, or what would indicate a small increase.

Section Seven: Solution-Focused Safety Assessment and Crisis Management in SUD

1. Identify public health trends in suicide, overdose, and injury among youth and young adults with SUD that justify the need for safety assessment in behavioral health settings.
2. Differentiate SF safety questions from problem-focused risk questions.
3. Recognize protective factors elicited through SF safety questions.
4. Evaluate scaling questions used to work the safety scale.
5. Identify clinician prompts that elicit reasons for staying safe during crisis contexts.

Section Eight: Follow-up, Graduation, and Challenging Situations in SUD

1. Identify follow-up session prompts that notice positive differences, amplify coping, and activate agency
2. Differentiate Solution-Focused responses used in group substance use settings by identifying prompts that highlight coping, strengths, vicarious resilience, and shared learning among group members.
3. Analyze how clinicians move through the 4-Square Framework (Best Hopes, Scaling, VIP Mapping, Amygdala Whispering/Languaging) within a brief 12-minute group interaction
4. Differentiate vicarious resilience from vicarious trauma in Solution-Focused group encounters by identifying interactions where group members witness coping, endurance, and functioning in others.
5. Analyze clinician responses to relapse by selecting statements that frame relapse as a sign of success and learning in substance use recovery.
6. Apply compassionate Solution-Focused strategies in chronic pain and substance use scenarios by choosing questions that honor lived experience while emphasizing coping, functioning, and agency

This course consists of the following components. The program must be completed in order, and your certificate of completion will be issued only after all components are complete and you receive a passing grade of 80%.

1. Course Introduction
2. Written Materials
3. Video Lecture and demonstrations
4. Practice Exercises
5. Exam Instructions and Exam Preview
6. Course Exam
7. Course Evaluation
8. Certificate of Completion

After you have completed all of the sections, passed each of the section exams with a grade of 80%, and completed the course evaluation, you will receive your certificate of completion. You will be able to save and print the certificate.

12  CE Credit/Clock Hours are available for this course.

Please visit our Continuing Education Information page for details on CE credits, clock hours, and our accreditations and approvals for psychologists, social workers, and counselors. The Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy offers continuing education credits. Click here for more information: 

Participants are encouraged to check with their professional licensing boards to make sure that a specific course will be accepted for their continuing education requirements.

Psychologists

The Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy, LLC, is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy, LLC, maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Psychologists completing this course receive 12 continuing education hours.

The Institute is also recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists (#PSY-0127).

Social Workers

The Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy, provider number 1831, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 9/22/2023 – 9/22/2026. Social workers completing this course receive 12 Clinical continuing education credits.

The Institute is also approved by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work (#SW-0656), and by the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapy, and Mental Health Counseling.

Counselors
The Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy, LLC has been approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7049.  The Institute for Solution-Focused Therapy, LLC, is solely responsible for all aspects of the program. Counselors completing this course receive 12 clock hours.

The Institute is also approved by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors (#MHC-0233), and by the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker, and Marriage and Family Therapist Board.

No conflicts of interest or commercial support are present for the CE program, instructor, or presentation.

Once enrolled, you may begin your course at any time.

Our complete list of policies can be viewed here.