Engagement: Relationship Building with Persons Served

About the Course

This training focuses on the relationship between staff and persons they serve, and explores how to build rapport and strengthen the relationship through a strengths-based, person-centered approach.  There is a focus on how to promote engagement utilizing multicultural competence, Motivational Interviewing, Stages of Change model, and coaching.  Hands-on activities will help staff explore and identify tools they can utilize with the persons they serve.  Facilitators will describe the different styles of support and have staff identify their particular styles, and examples of how to apply each style.  This training will also discuss utilizing active listening and communication skills to maximize engagement.

Course Objectives

1. Participants will be able to describe the importance of relationship in a person’s recovery journey
2. Participants will be able to describe a strengths-based, culturally-responsive approach
3. Participants will be able to identify their support styles and the importance of flexibility
4. Participants will acquire additional engagement skills utilizing Motivational Interviewing and coaching tools

Target Audience

Target audience includes social workers, professional counselors, marriage and family therapists, recovery coaches, peer specialists, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, and substance abuse counselors for this intermediate level of instruction.

CEs

• 2.0 PCB Approved Education Credits
• 2.0 Continuing Education Credits for Licensed Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists
• 2.0 Continuing Education credits for Registered Nurses (RN) and Licensed Practical Nurses (LPN)

There is no conflict of interest or commercial support for this program.

All attendees must arrive promptly at the beginning of the training and remain the duration of the training to receive continuing education credits.  Please have license number available when signing in.

Persons with disabilities and special needs are encouraged to contact the registrar for further information.

About the Presenters

Lynsey Reiss, MA, graduated from Franklin Pierce College in 2007 with a BA in English and Secondary Education.  Her initial career goal was to become an English teacher.  After graduation, Ms. Reiss interviewed for teaching positions in the Carolinas, and accepted a job teaching English to middle school students in Florence, South Carolina.  After three years, she left teaching to pursue other interests, one of those interests was mental health.  When Ms. Reiss returned home to Pennsylvania, she began to work as a direct care staff in a personal care home operated by Salisbury Behavioral Health.  From 2010 to 2012, she worked various positions, and rose through the ranks to become a Personal Care Home Administrator.

Ms. Reiss left Salisbury Behavioral Health in 2015, and transitioned to the role of Recovery Coach at Penn Foundation.  While at Penn Foundation, Ms. Reiss worked as a Recovery Coach through much of her graduate program.  She completed an internship at the Recovery Center Outpatient program, and then transitioned to the role of Inpatient Counselor during the last year of graduate school.  Ms. Reiss graduated with a MA in Counseling Psychology from Delaware Valley University in 2018.  She continues to work as an Inpatient Counselor in the Recovery Center, and also works two nights each week as a fee-for-service counselor in the Recovery Center Outpatient program.  Most recently, Ms. Reiss was promoted to Lead Co-Occurring Counselor in the Recovery Center.

Chelsey Phillips, MSW, is the Assistant Residential Director for Penn Villa and has been with Penn Foundation since February 2017.  Ms. Phillips initially thought she would find a career as a Medical Examiner until her second year at Cedar Crest College when she decided to take an Introduction to Social Work class.  It was then that she decided to make a switch into social work and has never looked back.  During her fieldwork she interned at a halfway house for substance use/mental health and also crisis intervention in the Emergency Department of a local community hospital.  Prior to joining Penn Foundation, Ms. Phillips worked in private adoption for five years working with expectant/birth parents as well as prospective/adoptive parents.  Ms. Phillips found herself drawn to the mental health and substance abuse field throughout her work with expectant/birth parents and decided to leave private adoption and come back to mental health.  She earned her BSW from Cedar Crest College and her MSW from Marywood University.  She has also worked as an adjunct professor in the Social Work Department at Cedar Crest College.

For more information, contact Karen M. Karen at 215.453.5171 or kkern@pennfoundation.org

If you do not receive the professional benefits described in our program materials or you have some other professional complaint, please let us know in writing within 7 days of the training and we will honor your request for a refund.