The development of a safe, secure and therapeutic relationship in which there is trust and rapport is important for all therapies, but essential when working with children who have experienced relational trauma. Children with relational trauma often need opportunities to rework attachment difficulties. This program prepares clinicians for clinical practice utilizing yoga movement and expressive arts to create treatment plans for trauma informed care.​ This intensive program will prepare clinicians for working with children through a relational and integrative approach to play and yoga movement therapy. The program is experiential and participants will be engaging in art, play and yoga throughout the program. 

This course focuses on the foundational principles of play therapy practice including history, theory and clinical application of expressive arts into our work with children and adolescents. Participants will have the opportunity to work collaboratively within play therapy offices for experiential learning. Treatment planning and ethical considerations for child practice will be reviewed with conversion regarding special populations.

This workshop discusses and evaluates a relational theoretical perspective to trauma informed care building an autocatalytic integration to adverse experiences for mind body connection. The course covers current neuroscience, trauma theory, using movement, expressive arts and narratives for supporting children and families. Experiential learning will solidify constructs.

This workshop will discuss the clinical practice of utilizing sandtray therapy with children and adolescents in play therapy. Participants will have the opportunity to create their own sandtrays and have the experience of learning how to interpret sand trays, ascertain clinical formulation and understand how to process the symbolic meaning in communication with the client experience. This workshop focuses on honoring the client and developmental process along with building treatment planning using sandtray as a modality.

Foundations of Animal Assisted Human Health

This course provides a comprehensive beginning to animal-assisted human health. The course reviews the human animal bond theory and begins to make connections to therapy practices. Learning will include history, ethical practices including link violence, current research and various healthcare settings animal assisted therapy can be incorporated. Participants will differentiate between animal assisted therapy and animal assisted activities. The course outlines how to differentiate between emotional support, therapy animals and service animals. First steps towards policy creation for animal assisted human health programs.

Animal Connections

This course reviews the variety of animal species which participate in animal assisted human health, however pays special attention to canine partners. Animal behavior is a central portion of this course study including animal welfare and ethics. The course covers how to select, train, screen and make decisions about animal connections within clinical practice. The course continues to review policy for building successful programs.

Animal Assisted Human Health in Clinical Practice

This course provides instruction for successfully incorporating animal assisted human health within clinical practice. Discussion will include successful treatment plan writing, clinical interventions and incorporating research and best practice guidelines into the work for effective management of the animal partners in session. The course provides opportunity to finalize policy and decision making for animal assisted human health programs in private practice or clinic settings.

Capstone

Students will complete a paper and deliver a capstone presentation ‘Ted Talk’ style integrating learning from coursework into their own specialized research topic. Participants will be asked to engage in experiential demonstration of animal assisted human health applications. The session includes dialog with those in the field of animal assisted human health, group discussion and opportunities to continue connection and consultation with the animal assisted human health community.

Understanding infant & toddler mental health is the key to preventing and treating the mental health problems of very young children and their families. It also helps guide the development of healthy social and emotional behaviors. This workshop will provide a foundational knowledge for the field of infant toddler mental health. Participants will be able to expand their skills of assessment, intervention and techniques for working with very young children and their families through an attachment-focused play therapy perspective.

Mental health intersects in many different ways with culture, history, race, gender, location, and language. This workshop acknowledges the compounding impact of structural inequity and is responsive to the unique needs of diverse communities. Cultural awareness, responsiveness, and understanding are essential to increasing access and improving the standard of care for children, families, and communities globally. Enhancing cultural competence and encouraging cultural humility are essential to increasing access and improving the standard of care for children, families, and communities across the nation.  This workshop explores identity and society through a sandtray experiential process. 

The intersections between culture and trauma may include, but are not limited to:

Political change and minority cultures

Infant toddler mental health and trauma

Disrupted attachment and trauma

Refugee and immigrant youth

Disparities in mental health care (social determinants of health)

Racial injustice and trauma

Cultural and linguistic competency in child trauma services

Historical trauma

Trauma in LGBTQ youth

This workshop focuses on the business of play therapy practices including setting up paperwork to ensure ethical client care guidelines are being met. Participants will engage in the art of facilitating successful assessment, development of comprehensive play therapy treatment plans which meet managed care rules and receive education regarding managing and maintaining routine clinical documentation within progress notes. This is an experiential workshop to involve active participation with case examples.

Working with parents in play therapy provides professionals with a deeper understanding of the value of including parents in the play therapy process. This six-credit hour workshop with emphasize strategies for strengthening the connection between the clinician and parent as well as between the parent and child. Forging a therapeutic alliance with parents can be particularly challenging, and effectively engaging parents in the play therapy process through relationship and empowerment can be difficult. This workshop draws from current research and insight from the fields of attachment theory, neuroscience, infant mental health and play therapy to provide clinicians with tools for working with a broad range of parents and caregivers. The course will cover parent consultation, treatment planning, the stages of change and loss grief cycle when confronting diagnoses and neurodevelopmental differences, how and when to engage parents in the play therapy room, and appropriate documentation as well as legal and ethical issues in working with a diverse range of parents.

This workshop explores play and expressive arts therapy integrated into a relational cultural theoretical framework. Play and art will bring this theory to life for working with children and families. Relational cultural play therapy spans trauma theory, current research in neuroscience, relational theory and social justice. The concepts of intersectionality and clinical applications will be discussed through experiential activities for hands-on learning.

This workshop is designed for clinicians who have been using sandtray within their clinical work and have the foundational knowledge in place as a prerequisite. Principles of interpersonal neurobiology, particularly exploring the world of attachment and its impact on therapeutic modalities, including play therapy will be discussed through sandtray application. Participants will be asked to bring a case or clinical issue for case analysis for experiential practice using sandtray as a vehicle to process the complexities and countertransference associated.

This workshop provides an overview for the therapeutic powers of play, answering the question: Why does play therapy work? Participants will engage in discussion and experiential training for 20 core agents of change for child and family therapy.