Solution-Focused Skills And Practice For Agencies

The most effective way to learn solution-focused professional skills is to have intensive guided practice. This course is designed to provide practical skills and opportunities to practice the core solution-focused skills under the guidance of a master solution-focused practitioner and trainer. This course provides an additive live-interactive synchronous learning dimension to our asynchronous agency course offerings. This course is designed to provide practical skills and opportunities to practice the core solution-focused skills. The course provides eight – 90 minutes (12 hours) of bi-monthly group sessions with live interactive teaching, personal and professional training practice exercises, case presentations, role-plays, and an optional final presentation from participants demonstrating how they have applied solution-focused skills in their unique area of practice.

Solution-Focused Skills and Practice for Agencies is an online, live (synchronous), lecture and practice-based course. Participants will have an opportunity to share practice exercises, successes, and challenges while building the participant’s confidence in the solution-focused approach within their unique practice context.

The specific Learning Objectives of the course are as follows. After completing the course, participants will be able to:

1. Describe solution-focused skills that enhance engagement and the therapeutic alliance
2. Demonstrate fluency in core solution-focused questions
3. Demonstrate the use of evidenced-based compliments
4. Demonstrate how to discover and amplify positive differences/exceptions using solution-focused questions
5. Illustrate fluency in building an emotional “yes-set”
6. Illustrate building a shared dialect incorporating client and solution-focused language
7. Illustrate the importance of a system’s perspective using VIPS by presenting oral examples
8. Illustrate skills that facilitate the negotiation of goals and how to maintain a solution- focused conversation while gathering required clinical information.
9. Summarize qualities of well-formed goals
10. Explain ways scaling questions can be used to enhance goal negotiation including how to incorporate VIPs within scaling questions
11. Apply skills to amplify scaling questions
12. Integrate solution-focused safety questions within a case
13. Apply solution-focused practices to work setting interactions or particular area of interest

Participants will be assessed in the following manner.

1. Class Participation: Discussions, practice exercises, and participation invite participants to learn from one another. By sharing your knowledge, perspectives and experiences, as well as challenging one another in respectful ways, you will strengthen your understanding of the course material. Participants are invited to clarify things they do not understand, pose questions, offer ideas, and broaden perspectives.
2. Written log/Journal: Participants are encouraged to keep a written log of practice exercises provided following each session and discussed at the subsequent session.
3. Optional Participant Presentation: At the end of the course, participants will be invited to share an optional presentation exemplifying how they have integrated Solution-Focused practices in their work. Our hope is for participants to become an “expert” on a particular aspect of Solution-Focused practice relative to their particular area of professional expertise. The presentation can be developed in any format and include a brief description of the topic and links to the Solution-Focused practices learned from the course.

After you have completed the course and completed the course evaluation, you will receive your certificate of completion. You will be able to save the certificate as a PDF file, from which you will also be able to print it.

12 CE Credit/Clock Hours are available for this course

Pricing varies according to agency needs. Please contact us and consider scheduling a pre-training agency consultation.

Continuing Education credit information will be available when the course is launched. To receive continuing education hours, the student must attend each session, participate completely with all activities, and complete the course evaluation.