Professional Development in Nelson and Marlborough

Introduction to Working with Clients with Sexual Violence Trauma

Presenter: Dr Kim McGregor

Due to the interpersonal betrayal and complex effects associated with child sexual abuse (CSA), working with survivors can be challenging. Making things more difficult, many counselling and other courses do not provide specific training for this issue. These factors often leave counsellors and other professionals lacking confidence when working with survivors of child sexual abuse.This one day workshop will outline the prevalence, dynamics and effects of CSA, useful therapeutic approaches and messages from almost 200 Aotearoa/New Zealand survivors of CSA about what they found helpful and unhelpful in therapy. Most frequent comments from participants of this workshop are about counsellors and other professionals feeling "more confident" in their work and "validated" in their approaches.

Dr Kim McGregor, QSO, has worked as a therapist with survivors of sexual abuse for 30 years. She is the author of: Warriors of Truth a self-help book for adult survivors of child sexual abuse (1994); the up-dated version Surviving and Moving On (2008); the first set of ACC national therapy guidelines Therapy Guidelines: Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (2001). She has published several papers including in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, and Journal of Trauma and Dissociation. She is the co-author of the book Powergames (published in NZ & UK 2001). Her doctoral thesis Therapy It’s a Two-Way Thing (2003) explored what a sample of women survivors of child sexual abuse found helpful and unhelpful in therapy. Her post-doctoral thesis explored the health impacts of child sexual abuse and the types of responses survivors wanted from health care professionals. Kim currently runs her own research and therapy company Tiaki Consultants alongside her partner Russell Smith. She also has a part time role as the Chief Victims Advisor to Government. From 2005-2015 Kim was the Executive Director of Rape Prevention Education Whakatu Mauri, 2005-2013 was a founding and executive member of the Te Ohaakii a Hine - National Network Ending Sexual Violence Together, and the Tauiwi Caucus Chair, 2007-2009 was a member of the New Zealand government’s Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence and was a founding and executive member of Project Restore 2004-2013. Kim has worked alongside Louise Nicholas since 2006 and wrote the Foreword for her book Louise Nicholas My Story.

Working with Parents, Couples & Families from a DBT Perspective

Presenter: Professor Alan Fruzzetti

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has been shown in dozens of studies to be effective in treating the many problems associated with emotion dysregulation. DBT has been adapted by Dr. Alan Fruzzetti for use with couples, parents, and families, with several studies demonstrating successful outcomes. In this practical workshop, Dr. Fruzzetti will describe and demonstrate: 1) family interventions to reduce severe dysfunctional individual behaviour, including dangerous behaviours, and 2) interventions to improve family relationships in general, and thus to help families become less destructive, and more peaceful and loving.

After a brief orientation to the treatment model, lectures, role plays, and experiential exercises will be used to demonstrate how to: 1) build a treatment target hierarchy with families, including self-harm, aggression, substance use, angry outbursts, withdrawal, and relationship problems; 2) utilize traditional DBT skills and new DBT family skills with parents, partners, and other family members; 3) apply “chain analyses” with two or more family members simultaneously, to expose dysfunctional steps when emotion escalates out of control; 4) use principles and intervention strategies of DBT with families to make communication possible, and help rebuild relationships; and 5) integrate both acceptance and change strategies (and skills) into solutions. 

This workshop is appropriate whether you have no prior DBT experience or are looking to improve your DBT skills.

Dr. Alan E. Fruzzetti is Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Research Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is also Co-Director of the DBT program at Willow Springs Center, a residential care facility for teens, the Director of Research for the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, and on the Board of Directors of the Linehan Institute. In addition to his work with suicidal and self-harming adults and teens, Dr. Fruzzetti also has developed multiple applications of DBT for women victims of domestic violence, eating disorders, and for partners, parents and other family members of people with borderline personality and related problems. He has authored more than 100 research and clinical papers and book chapters, and two books, and is the co-creator of the NEA-BPD Family Connections program, for parents, partners, and other loved ones of people with BPD and related problems. He was honoured as the “Psychologist of the Year” in Nevada in 2010 and honoured by the International Society for DBT with its career “DBT Research Award” in 2013.

Childhood Anxiety

Presenter: Dr Allison Waters & Dr Trisha Groth

Childhood Anxiety is often overlooked or misinterpreted as being a behavioural or developmental problem. While some anxiety is a normal part of childhood, around 12 per cent of children develop a diagnosable disorder, experiencing fear, nervousness, and shyness, and avoiding places and activities. Without intervention these children are at higher risk to perform poorly in school, miss out on important social experiences, and experience physical complaints such as sleeplessness, diarrhoea, stomach aches and headaches. Fortunately, when properly recognised and managed, anxiety disorders are very treatable. Years of psychological research has shown that short cognitive behavioural interventions will help anxious children cope better both socially and scholastically as well as avoid a possible lifetime of debilitating emotional distress.

The key themes of this workshop will include

• Recognising behaviours suggestive of anxiety disorders, and differentiating anxiety from other problems with similar symptoms.
• An overview of the most common anxiety disorders in childhood and early adolescence and the common factors that contribute to their development
• The impact of anxiety on learning and development, peer relationships and family life
• Tools to assist in assessment of childhood anxiety problems
• Effective strategies for working with anxious children which have applicability across a range of professional contexts.  Particular attention will be paid to strategies for enhancing interventions based on the latest research on cognitive and exposure-based strategies.

Dr Allison Waters is Professor in Clinical Psychology at Griffith University in Queensland  where she runs the Childhood Anxiety Disorders Research Programme. She specialises in the cognitive-neuroscience of anxiety disorders in children and integrates this knowledge into intervention research and clinical practice. Dr Trisha Groth is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice on the Gold Coast who specialises in working with child and youth anxiety. Trisha has unique experience specialising in the application of the latest knowledge on cognitive and exposure-based principles into clinical practice. Based on their combined research and clinical experience, Allison and Trisha created the highly effective 'Take Action' children's anxiety programme. This workshop integrates their combined research and practice knowledge and the content contained in the programme to offer participants a suite of practical ideas for effectively intervening with children experiencing anxiety.