Understanding Child and Family Team Meetings

Level: Advanced Practice

Credits: 6

Intended Audience: Social Workers, Supervisors, Managers

Description of Course: This training provides the context for Child & Family Team meetings in San Bernardino County. CFT meetings are a process to integrate best-practice concepts from Safety Organized Practice and integrating the assessment and response to behavioral health needs as a result of the Katie A lawsuit. The workshop reviews the history of the Katie A lawsuit, the differences in class/subclass and CFT/TDM, the three structure of the CFT Meeting, the importance of Circles of Safety, and the review of the County toolkit. This course was previously combined with a second day focusing on skills practice of facilitation skills. Essentially this is Day One of the former Two-Day course. This is a highly-interactive workshop relying on small and large group discussions, small group discussions and demonstration.

Intended Learning Objectives:

• Understand the 3 dimensions of facilitated practice
• Increase skills on building shared understanding and shared agreements
• Understand basic facilitation skills
• Understand respectful engagement of participants in CFTMs
• Facilitate exploration of worries, what’s working well and what needs to happen
• Facilitate exploration of safety networks and collaboratively plan with families

Topics Include:

• Katie A Lawsuit
• SOP integration
• Safety Circles
• CFT Pre-Meeting, Meeting, Process & Agenda