Basic – Solution-Focused Skills and Practice for Agencies

The most effective way for behavioral health organization staff to learn solution-focused professional skills is to have intensive guided practice. This course is designed to provide skills and opportunities to practice the core solution-focused skills under the guidance of a master solution-focused practitioner and trainer. The course provides an additive live-interactive learning dimension to our self-paced behavioral health course offerings. The course includes six bi-monthly group sessions (two hours each, 12 hours total) with live interactive teaching, personal and professional training practice exercises, case presentations, and role-plays. This course is limited to 25 participants per cohort to maximize interactive learning.

We also offer this as a self-paced customized course: BASIC Self-Paced Solution-Focused Skills and Practice for Agencies. By recording your organization’s live sessions, we can provide organizations with a customized BASIC Self-Paced Solution-Focused Skills and Practice for Agencies course that offers a sustainable, flexible, and customizable solution to provide organizations training and continuing education even if participants cannot be present for the 12 hours of live-interactive BASIC – Solution-focused skills and practice for agencies course. The self-paced customized course also provides solutions to meet the challenges of training mental health organizations with complex staffing needs, onboarding new staff,  staff turnover, unanticipated crises that require immediate staff attention, or any of a variety of unpredictable events that make it difficult for staff to participate in all 12 hours of the live sessions.  Continuing education mandates require participants to be present for the entire live synchronous courses. This self-paced course offers a creative solution. This course has a required exam to earn continuing education credits. 

Last Updated: August 2022

Target Audience: Social workers, psychologists, mental health counselors, educators, and medical professionals;  appropriate for all levels of knowledge.

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

Participants will be assessed in the following manner:

• Class Participation: Students are invited to clarify things they do not understand, pose questions, offer ideas, and broaden perspectives.

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

Please see our Continuing Education Information page for information about CE credits and clock hours and our accreditations and approvals for psychologists, social workers, counselors, and marriage & family therapists.

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

To receive continuing education hours, the participant must attend the entire online presentation, engage in all activities, and complete the course evaluation.

Upon successfully completing the course, participants will be given instructions on downloading and printing their Certificates of Completion.

Our complete list of policies can be viewed here.