WEBINAR: How to Engage Parents in Trauma Treatment Using Motivational Phone Calls

PRESENTED BY SCOTT P. SELLS, PHD, MSW, LCSW, LMFT ON 10-12-2018 AT 9 A.M. PACIFIC (NOON EASTERN) TO 11 A.M. PACIFIC (2 P.M. EASTERN)

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Engaging parents and children in effective trauma treatment can be difficult in the best of circumstances. Conventionally, engagement and rapport building begins in the first face-to-face session. More often than not, it is a harsh set-up. Parents and children may enter the first session angry, frustrated, or hopeless, with their arms tightly crossed. The slightest provocation could open conflict and confrontation between parents and children.

In this two-hour continuing education web conference, Dr. Scott Sells will discuss how using the Motivational Interviewing (MI) phone call technique can help prevent conflict and create effective first sessions. Dr. Sells will explain how the MI phone call technique can help parents and older children move from anger, defensiveness, or resistance to hope, excitement, and anticipation for the first session. From this place of hope, parents may be more cooperative with the treatment plan and more willing to bring in the entire family to the first session.

This introductory instructional level web conference is designed to help clinicians:

1. Utilize a seven-question motivational phone call script and additional techniques such as “stick and move” and “complements” to quickly put parents at ease.
2. Analyze a real case which illustrates the step-by-step process of how the FST | Family Systems Trauma Model utilizes the motivational phone call to engage and lower resistance before the first session.
3. Observe the differences between a soft start-up to begin treatment and a harsh start-up and why a soft start-up is preferable.
4. Assess key concepts illustrated through audio excerpts from an actual motivational phone call.
5. Use the final question in the motivational phone call script to encourage a parent to invite their extended family to participate in treatment.

Scott P. Sells, Ph.D., MSW, LCSW, LMFT, is the author of three books, Treating the Tough Adolescent: A Family-Based, Step-by-Step Guide (1998), Parenting Your Out-of-Control Teenager: 7 Steps to Reestablish Authority and Reclaim Love(2001), and Treating the Traumatized Child: A Step-by-Step Family Systems Approach (2017).