40 Developmental Assets
12-session workshop. No Prerequisites.
The Search Institute has been steadily gaining in popularity all across the country because of the power of its information and research. Using its 40 Developmental Assets, the Institute has surveyed over two million youth across the United States and Canada since 1989, determining that the more of the 40 assets present in the lives of young people, the more likely they will develop in positive and healthful ways and the fewer the number of assets present, the greater the possibility youth will engage in risky behaviors such as drug use, unsafe sex, and violence.
By learning more about each of the 40 Developmental Assets and ways to present each to parents and caregivers, family educators will be equipped to effectively increase the number of assets present in families and therefore positively impact the emotional health of families and of young people in very clear and specific ways based on this dynamic, powerful and well-researched program.
Effective Discipline: Why just enforcing rules is not enough
Prerequisites: None.
This 6 session series, explores the struggles often faced when trying to effectively discipline young children. We will present the latest research on brain development and its connections to the anger and frustration that often accompanies discipline. We will provide practical techniques can be used to promote and apply healthier attitudes, understanding, and the skills of effective discipline. The books that will be used for this course include Connections, Kids, Parents & Power Struggles, and Conscious Discipline in addition to IFP course materials.
Enhancing Capacity for Applying Trauma Principles
12 sessions. Prerequisites: Enhancing Trauma Awareness, Deepening Trauma Awareness, AND Applying Trauma Principles OR Enhancing Trauma Awareness, Deepening Trauma Awareness, AND Essential Communication Skills.
We are excited to share a journey with professionals in which we merge the information, concepts, approaches, principles, and skills of essential communication with those of trauma and review and renew abilities to apply many trauma-sensitive concepts, approaches, principles, and skills in real-life situations.
Overall we hope to enhance and enrich individual and collective abilities to respond, interact, nurture, facilitate growth and new awareness and, in some cases, facilitate healing processes when unresolved trauma and its aftermath are factors impacting an infant, child, or adult’s life.
We believe that in large part enhancing capacity for applying trauma principles involves integrating the information, concepts, approaches, principles, and skills we have already learned about the subject of trauma with the skills of reflective processing. In this course, professionals will be invited to learn more about general reflective processing and then how to merge it with the trauma information, concepts, approaches, principles, and skills previously explored, plus the additional information we can glean from the reading and presentations.
As a result of merging these two main concepts, trauma-sensitivity, and reflective processing, we will frequently refer to processes of enhancing capacity in applying trauma principles as focusing on becoming more aware, sensitive and competent trauma-focused reflective processors. Much of the practicum work in this course will focus on this combination of being trauma-focused and applying the information, concepts, approaches, principles, and skills of reflective processing along with adapting other information, concepts, approaches, principles, and skills previously explored.
We believe as a result of attending and participating in this and the succeeding course (Enhancing Capacity for Applying Trauma Principles, Part Two) professionals become clearer, more confident, and more competent to:
- Advocate for systems becoming trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive
- Ensure to whatever degree is possible that traumatizing events are prevented from occurring in the first place
- Ensure that adults who interact with children who have probably or definite trauma-related issues and needs do not exacerbate those children’s or adult’s issues and needs
- Promote processes around recovery and healing of trauma-related issues and needs
Participants are invited to explore their own trauma-related issues and needs, should they have had any such experiences, and practice facilitating trauma-focused Reflective Processing with classmates.
Essential Communication Skills: To listen or to talk…that is the question
9 sessions. Prerequisites: None.
This course invites participants to explore the principles and practices of essential communication skills. Early Childhood Educators and Family Professionals need proficiency in intentionally using healthy communication skills when interacting with parents, caregivers, colleagues, clients, and staff. By gaining more proficiency in using these skills, family professionals become better equipped to promote healthy, meaningful relationships. Participants are invited to engage in a myriad of interpersonal exercises to enhance and hone their communication skills including Active Listening, Affirmations, basics of Teaching, Problem Exploration, and I-Messages.
Exploring Family Legacies
Prerequisite: Essential Communication Skills OR All Three (3) Trauma Courses.
Families profoundly influence each person’s beliefs, values, approaches to life, and abilities to create and maintain healthy relationships, often as a result of the powerful forces of invisible legacies and loyalties. Using Michael Reddy’s Health, Happiness and Family Constellations and Monica McGoldrick’s You Can Go Home Again we will explore the principles and impact of family beliefs, patterns, legacies, and loyalties as a way to better understand why people behave as they do. In this 6-session course, educators and family professionals will enhance their awareness, understanding of and appreciation for attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors they observe in their clients and through group discussions will explore ways to impress, inform and inspire their clients in order to empower them to interrupt unhealthy loyalties to trans-generational legacies, patterns, beliefs, and values.
Group Facilitation
6-session workshop. Prerequisites: None.
Content includes:
– Principles and properties of groups
– Ways to intentionally promote healthy group processes
– Key interactive skills in which all group facilitators need to be proficient
– Design approaches to maximize effective group dynamics
– Ways to identify and respond effectively to group members who are disruptive, distracting or detached
Using role-plays and feedback processes, participants will have opportunities to practice new skills and refine existing leadership techniques. Participants will be able to:
– Clearly and confidently describe typical parenting group processes and dynamics that can maximize the effectiveness of group experiences for parents and caregivers
– Demonstrate specific skills and approaches to effective group management
– Apply principles of effective group management in vivo
Level I Foundations in Emotional and Relational Health
12-session foundational course. Required for advancement to Level II. Content includes:
– A philosophical approach that embraces the importance of emotional health
– Core information about child development and ways to appreciate each child’s uniqueness
– Fundamental leadership concepts that address recognition of the phases of growth
– Ways to promote self-discovery
– Attributes of effective family trainers
– Ways to ensure the transfer of training
Level II: Emotional Health
12 sessions. Prerequisite: Level I Foundations Training
Content includes:
– What promotes self-esteem
– Ways to recognize needs
– Identifying stress due to change
– Underlying issues
– Core belief systems
– Message awareness
– Grief and trauma
– Values
– Emotional intelligence
– Leadership concepts addressing burnout
– Ways adults learn
– Recognition of and response to serious psychological issues in children and adults
– The distinction between education and therapy
Level II: Communication Skills
12 sessions. Prerequisites: Level I Foundations Training and Level II Emotional Health.
– 7 basic communication skills
– Specific applications of communication skills for family educators
– Recognition of ineffective and toxic forms of communication
– Emphasis on active listening skill development
– Recognizing and developing affirmations and I-messages
– Question sensitivity
– Problem exploration
– Conflict resolution
– Leadership concepts that address approaches for creating safe group environments
– Ways to decrease threat levels and promote trust
– Effective teaching and learning sequences
Level II: Relational Health
12 sessions. Prerequisites are: Level I Foundations and Level II Emotional Health and Level II Communication Skills OR Basic Principles & Approaches and Essential Communication Skills OR Enhancing Trauma Awareness and Deepening Trauma Awareness.
This training allows opportunities to explore in more depth the nature, properties, principles, and forces of relationships. Together we will discover ways to become more aware and intentional about our relationships and ways we can help parents and caregivers become more aware and intentional in their relationships.
Specifically, this series will assist participants in being equipped to intentionally build, promote, foster, maintain, and repair relationships as we systematically explore the subject of relational health. We will connect the many principles and properties of emotional health to relational health as well as blend and synthesize the many concepts presented thus far in IFP training.
Level III Advanced Leadership Training, Part 1
12 sessions. Prerequisites: Level I Foundations Training, Level II Emotional Health, Level II Communication Skills OR Basic Principles & Approaches, Essential Communication Skills AND Level II Relational Health, Group Facilitation.
This 12-session course will introduce the practicum nature of Level III, including:
– The nature and benefits of applying measurable standards to family educators’ presentations
– Interactive processes to promote uniform competencies throughout the city’s human services system
– The application of essential leadership principles through in-class demonstrations and assessments
– The invitation to class members to participate in making presentations and offering feedback to colleagues using the IFP Performance Outcome Evaluation Tool. (Participants may choose to present/co-facilitate or observe only.)
Level III Advanced Leadership Training, Part 2
12 sessions. Prerequisites: Level I Foundations Training, Level II Emotional Health, Level II Communication Skills OR Basic Principles & Approaches, Essential Communication Skills, AND Level II Relational Health, Group Facilitation, Level III Advanced Leadership Training Part 1.
In Level III Part 2 we will deepen our exploration of the nuances of leadership using a practicum approach. We will continue to explore the nature and benefits of applying measurable standards to family educators’ presentations with an emphasis on designing and conducting interactive exercises, facilitating discussion processes, and management of challenging situations.
Class members will be encouraged to participate in giving presentations, participating in designing and conducting interactive exercises, and facilitating a variety of discussion processes.
Mindful Interactions: Facing challenges and having difficult conversations
10-session workshop. Prerequisites: None.
Consider the various ways you interact with others. How mindful are you of preserving safety, building trust and respect, or providing an atmosphere that fosters fairness and openness? Is there an emphasis on building, maintaining and, when necessary, repairing relationships through the use of healthy, effective, and appropriate communication skills that maintain healthy interactive processes? Whether your interactions are brief and informal or more structured, there are key components critical to enhancing the probability of achieving the desired outcome. This course utilizes the transmission of accurate, well-researched and relevant information to help you identify principles, concepts, approaches, and skills that are useful in a variety of unique needs and settings, including those interactions that are more challenging and difficult.
Nurture the Leaders Part 2
6 sessions: Prerequisites: Nurture the Leaders Part 1.
Course content will include topics such as the Congruent Parallel Process, Observer Role, Self-Discovery, Transfer of Training principles, Temperament, Critical Leadership Skills, Process, Language Awareness, Developmental Tasks, Maturity, Healthy Communication, Expression of Emotion, Emotional Intelligence and Concept Relevancy. Participants will continue reading the books from the first four sessions Nurture the Leaders course (Resonant Leadership and Growing Up Again) as well as additional books titled Pathways to Competence and The Black Parenting Book.
Overindulgence: When all they want is everything
6 sessions. Prerequisites: None.
Based in part on Jean Illsley Clarke’s Leader’s Guide for How Much Is Enough along with other sources, this course provides family professionals with the research around overindulgence and ways to describe it to their audiences, to share how it happens, how it can be prevented and how it can be addressed when it already exists. Family professionals receive concrete suggestions and opportunities to explore ways to impress, inspire and inform their audiences so they can be more aware and better equipped to identify, address and prevent the many problems overindulgence can create.
Processing Pain, Facilitating Healing
9 sessions. Prerequisites: Enhancing Trauma Awareness and Essential Communication Skills OR All three (3) Trauma Courses
Every life has its share of pain. Professionals need to be intentional about addressing the pain, grief, and loss their client’s experience in order to be more effective as consultants and mentors. In this nine-session course, professionals working with children, adolescents, and/or families or professionals who are supervisors are invited to explore the nature of the many forms pain can take: losses, traumas, deep injustices, loneliness, and isolation, unremitting fear, and depression. We will engage in enhancing professionals’ approaches and skills to effectively process pain, grief, and loss so that instead of being debilitating, pain, grief, and loss can be effectively addressed, resolved, and healed, often resulting in powerful new insights about life and relationships.
Promoting Emotional Health: The art of looking past behavior and meeting needs
9 sessions. Prerequisites: None.
This course offers family professionals the opportunity to explore some of the fundamental principles and approaches we believe all those who work with children and families need to incorporate into their work. With an emphasis on promoting emotional and relational health, participants explore concepts around basic child development principles, emotional intelligence, self-esteem, understanding the nature of needs, the impact of values on behaviors and beliefs, and the power and impact of the balance of fair giving and receiving in relationships. Participants share in group discussions and other dynamic interactive processes along with experiencing informative presentations to enhance their core knowledge and skill bases.
Reflective Processing, Part 1
6 Sessions. Prerequisites: Essential Communication Skills.
Texts: Zero to Three Journal Reflective Supervision: What Is It and Why Do It? • Reflective
Supervision and Leadership • Emotion-Focused Therapy
Goals include:
– The subject of Reflective Processing: what it is, what it is not, how it has evolved, how it
compares with Reflective Supervision.
– Specific roles and responsibilities of family professionals who assume the identity of
facilitators of Reflective Processing.
– Underlying principles that determine the degree to which Reflective Processing is
meaningful, effective, and successful.
– Nuances and variety of venues and ways in which family professionals can apply the
principles and skills of Reflective Processing.
– Specific skills that facilitators of Reflective Processing need high levels of proficiency in
applying during Reflective Processing sessions
Reflective Processing, Part 2
6 sessions. Prerequisites: Essential Communication Skills and Reflective Processing Part 1
This course will be a continuation of Reflective Processing, Part 1 with an emphasis on providing multiple opportunities for participants to practice applying concepts, principles, and skills in role-plays and in sharing specific stories of ways each is conducting Reflective Processing sessions outside of class. We anticipate that each participant will engage in a process of integrating previously learned concepts, principles, and skills into concepts, principles, and skills presented in this course.
Restoring Sanctuary Book Discussion
Prerequisites: Enhancing Trauma Awareness (including the reading of Creating Sanctuary).
Understanding Anger Part 1
6-session workshop. Prerequisites: None.
Content includes:
– Anger management options that promote self-awareness and self-control
– Traits of chronic versus episodic anger
– Differences between constructive and destructive anger
– How the brain is involved in the feeling and expression of anger and the impact of hormones and biochemistry
– Children’s anger and ways to help children be more self-aware and have greater self-control, as well as healthy ways for adults to respond to children’s anger
Understanding Anger Part 2
6-session workshop. Prerequisite: Understanding Anger (Anger, part 1).
In these six sessions, we will continue our exploration of anger by inviting family educators to learn more about the connections between violence and anger, ways to teach parents about this connection, and ways to encourage parents to become better managers of their anger.
There will be an emphasis on gaining information educators can directly present to parents, skills educators can teach parents, and ideas for motivating parents to become calmer, healthier, and more in-charge of their anger.
Understanding Teens
6-session workshop. Prerequisites: None.
This training features six 2.5-hour sessions in which materials are presented to enhance and enrich educators’ understanding of the nature of adolescence, the needs and issues faced by parents and caregivers of adolescents, and suggestions for healthy and effective responses to the needs of adolescents. Included in the 6 sessions:
– A philosophical approach that embraces the importance of maintaining the emotional health of each teen while simultaneously preserving the health of each relationship in the family
– Core information about adolescent development in key areas of growth: physical, neurological, emotional, social, moral and intellectual
– Core information about the impact of hormones and other neurotransmitters on adolescent growth processes and related behaviors
– Encouragement to appreciate each adolescent’s uniqueness
– Acknowledgment of the impact typical adolescent growth processes and related behaviors can have on parents and caregivers
– Suggestions for responding to typical adolescent growth processes and related behaviors in ways that promote processes of successful maturation.
Workshop Certification
6-sessions. Prerequisites: Level I Foundations Training, Level II Emotional Health, Level II Communication Skills OR Basic Principles & Approaches, Essential Communication Skills AND Level II Relational Health, Group Facilitation, Level III Advanced Leadership Training Part 1, Level III Advanced Leadership Training Part 2.
It is clear that many family professionals who have faithfully attended IFP courses over the last five years deserve to receive formal acknowledgment for their work and abilities to effectively and intentionally apply the many leadership competencies promoted in IFP. Family professionals who meet the requirements to attend this course have the opportunity to demonstrate that they meet the standards set by IFP for leading educational workshops.
Through a process of making presentations to colleagues, having an IFP mentor provide a written Performance Outcome Evaluation outside class, completing a written final exam based on previous IFP training and an in-class final evaluation to demonstrate competencies, those who successfully meet all requirements are recognized as IFP Certified Parenting Educators.
