This professional development series has been designed to provide Tribal case managers with the knowledge, skills and tools to best serve their native communities. Case managers will participate in three consecutive days of training, once a month, over a period of three months, for a total of nine days of training. The skills and tools acquired during the nine-day program have been proven to successfully equip case managers with the knowledge to establish and maintain healthy relationships with clients. Through facilitated-topic group discussions, skill-building practice scenarios and interactive exercises, participants will build competency in their case management roles by learning to effectively communicate, engage and develop strong partnerships with clients and their families.
Module 1: Interactional Helping Skills
This course introduces participants to the Shulman Interactional Helping Skills model. Using the skills associated with the model, participants will be able to successfully break down barriers to engagement and will learn techniques for managing emotional situations.
Learning Objectives:
- Examine the four phases of the casework process
- Connect with clients by tuning into self and others
- Recognize the power and impact of your cultural context when interacting with others
- Ease a family’s anxiety by clarifying the purpose of and your role during an interview
- Understand the effects of the stages of change on a voluntary relationship
Module 2: Motivational Interviewing and Coaching Skills
Two Days
Motivational interviewing is an integrated and complex set of skills and strategies based on the principles of self-sufficiency and collaboration. This course includes instruction, opportunities for reflection, and practice of useful skills and strategies that are important in helping clients change their lives.
Learning Objectives:
- Define motivation
- Learn to work with resistance
- Understand the cycle of change
- Recognize and use change talk
- Learn OARS: Principles of motivational interviewing
- Hone in on active and reflective listening practices
Module 3: Strength-Based Assessment and Case Management
Case management effectiveness is driven by determination of what clients and their families need in order to be successful at becoming self-sufficient and stable. This course covers both quantitative and qualitative assessment strategies and introduces and refreshes the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to facilitate a client’s recognition and use of individual and family strengths to maximize their potential for success.
Learning Objectives:
- Maintain a strengths-based, family-focused approach
- Be respectful and mindful of boundaries
- Observe and assess the situation
- Determine client and family needs
- Use assessment outcomes to plan client and family goals
Module 4: Barriers to Self-Sufficiency
Two Days
Using a strengths-based model, the course develops knowledge and skills in identifying and appropriately responding to clients dealing with significant barriers to self-sufficiency. As a result of this course, participants have a greater understanding of the dynamics that influence client behavior and are able to conduct an initial assessment of major health and safety issues.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the dynamics of mental health, substance abuse, and family violence
- Work with clients who have a dual diagnosis
- Learn about safety planning with battered clients
- Understand family and community responses to mental health, substance abuse, and family violence
- Understand mandatory reporting
Module 5: Crisis Intervention and Trauma-Informed Case Planning
Participants will learn a variety of intervention techniques and skills that are vital in developing trust and respect in work with clients and their families. The course will also cover case planning for clients in crisis and those who have experienced major loss and trauma, and helping them address the associated challenges.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand what precipitates a crisis
- Gain tools for observing and assessing situations
- Learn techniques for dealing with potentially violent situations, domestic violence, and suicide threats
- Learn how to defuse verbal and physical escalation
- Understand compassion fatigue
- Gain wellness and self-care tools
- Gain Self-protection and stress management tools
Module 6: Serving Clients with Mental Health Challenges
At times, it may seem obvious when someone is going through a difficult time, but there is no simple way of knowing if someone has a mental health challenge. In this workshop, we will learn how to work with participants who may be dealing with mental health challenges. We will explore common terminology and understand symptoms, dual diagnoses and trauma (including ancestral/historical trauma), as well as gain a familiarity with treatment interventions. We will learn strategies that focus on how to make a positive difference when serving clients with mental health challenges.
Learning Objectives:
- Gain a foundational understanding of common mental health challenges and explore statistics across populations
- Identify signs and symptoms of someone who may have a mental health challenge
- Understand symptoms, dual diagnoses and trauma
- Link clients to community resources, including state and national resources
Module 7: Wellness in the Workplace
This workshop presents wellness as an approach to health that can result in greater vitality, control, responsibility and on-the-job effectiveness. Participants will better understand factors that may contribute to their own health risk and that of others as well as ways to reduce chronic pain and tension.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the signs and symptoms of stress
- Learn the relationship of wellness to self-esteem and productivity
- Recognize factors and habits that contribute to health risk
- Learn effective ways to handle job stress and relaxation techniques