Thursday Workshops Block A
A1 – Addressing The Dog In The Room: Service, Therapy, ESA's and Pets
Lynne Schmidt, LCSW & Service Dog Zoë
Across the nation, service dog handlers are being discriminated against, harassed, or put in danger when their service dogs are distracted in public settings. This workshop will aim to demystify the difference between a service dog, an emotion support animal (ESA), how and when to write an ESA letter for clients, and explore the bond humans have with their pets. and Presenters will review ADA requirements and the Fair Housing Act for service dogs and ESAs so that participants will have a better understanding of how to support their client's needs.
A2 – SpeakSooner: A Social Worker's Role in Facilitating Healthcare Communication
Bernard M Bandman, PhD & Michael J Welther, MD
We will introduce "SpeakSooner: A Patient’s Guide to Difficult Conversations" (Guide), a tool to help patients and their loved ones facing serious illness to identify questions and concerns related to diagnosis, prognosis, treatment options, quality of life issues and supportive care needs. Social workers can play a key role in helping patients navigate communication challenges with healthcare providers. Through role play and interactive discussion, participants will gain hands on experience in use of the Guide to prepare patients to actively engage in opening timely and honest conversations with healthcare providers about needs, concerns, priorities and goals of care. The training will emphasize respectful listening and supportive care.
A3 – Ethical Case Closure & Termination: Ending Therapy without Harm
Brittany Barberian, LCMHC
Ethical case closure and termination are among the most high-risk and under-trained aspects of clinical practice. This training, Ethical Case Closure and Termination: Ending Therapy Without Harm, provides clinicians with a structured, ethically grounded approach to ending therapy in a way that prioritizes client welfare while reducing legal and professional risk. Participants will explore the ethical, legal, and clinical foundations that guide termination decisions, including how to differentiate between planned, client-initiated, and therapist-initiated termination. The training emphasizes the prevention of abandonment through clear frameworks for notice, continuity of care, referrals, and risk assessment.
A4 – Polyamory & Ethical Non-Monogamy: What Every Clinician Needs To Know (at least to start)
Ami Lynch
This presentation offers an engaging, inclusive introduction to polyamory and ethical non-monogamy (ENM). Participants will learn key terms, historical context, and foundational ethical principles such as consent, honesty, and mutual respect. The session explores communication strategies, emotional challenges like jealousy, and common relationship structures. Legal issues and societal stigma are addressed, alongside practical tools for supporting clients in ENM relationships. Emphasis is placed on inclusivity, intersectionality, and self-reflection, helping professionals identify and challenge their own biases. Attendees will leave with greater confidence, cultural competence, and practical skills to ethically support individuals and families practicing non-monogamy.
A5: SSW Track – Bridging the Gap: Collaborative Models Between Schools, Mental Health Providers, and Families
Caroline J. Christie, LICSW
Drawing on a real-world partnership between Dartmouth Health and the Newport, NH School District, participants will examine concrete, replicable models for embedding clinical support within school systems — from co-facilitated DBT skills groups to shared decision-making in student support meetings. Attendees will leave with a clearer picture of what collaborative care looks like in practice, as well as tools and frameworks they can adapt to their own communities.
Thursday Workshops Block B
B1 – Restoring the Healer: Strategies for Compassion Fatigue and Burnout
Annmarie Karayianes & Brittany Barberian, LCMHC
In this training we will learn to recognize, manage, and mitigate the toll of secondary trauma. This training helps clinicians look inward to identify personal signs of vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Through evidence-informed strategies, you will learn to assess your own risk factors, uphold the ethical imperative of self-care, and build a personalized plan to maintain long-term professional resilience. Evidenced-informed models and practices that will be highlighted within this training are CBT, Narrative Therapy, Components for Enhancing Clinician Engagement and Reducing Trauma (CE-CERT), Mindfulness Techniques, and EMDR Techniques.
B2 – The VT Cultural Brokers and Connect Suicide Prevention: Partnering with Refugee Communities in Vermont
Ann M. Duckless, MA & Maria (Mercedes) Avila, Ph.D., MSW, MED
This workshop will delve into cultural considerations with the Best Practice VT Cultural Broker Team across six diverse VT refugee communities to improve health equity for community members. The shared goal is to raise awareness and reduce stigma around mental health, substance use, and suicide prevention; and to connect community members to effective and culturally informed services in schools and in healthcare/ social service agencies. A Best Practice program, the Connect training embraces a community-based model designed to increase the competence and confidence of community members and providers in preventing suicide. The Connect Program trains youth in suicide prevention, led and facilitated by high school youth to foster youth empowerment and voice. Using a trauma-informed and culturally sensitive lens in adapting training materials to community helpers fortifies the safety net for community members and offers a comprehensive, coordinated response to individuals at risk.
B3 – Clinical Supervision in the Age of AI
Alison Mitchell
GenerativeAI is firmly part of our collective operating environment now. The question is not if we incorporate genAI into Social Work practice as much as it is how we incorporate it ethically. Students at the undergraduate and graduate levels are learning the skills, qualities, and knowledge base of the Social Work profession in the context of AI. Are you ready to be their supervisor? During this seminar, we will consider NASW ethical standards that might guide use of AI in SW practice, and frameworks for decision-making. The session will include information about how genAI operates, and present several case studies for discussion. The session ends with a series of questions and “food for thought” next steps meant to engage participants in reflexive practice. Bring your questions, and be forewarned you may leave with more than you had when you started!
B4 – Transforming Trauma in High-Stress Human Systems: Supporting Regulated and Reflective Practice in Complex Social Work Environments
Dave Melnick, LICSW
This workshop introduces a Stress-Regulation Systems (SRS) lens for understanding how high-pressure social service environments shape perception, communication, and decision-making. Under stress, human beings naturally narrow attention, simplify complexity, and move toward faster, more protective responses. In social work settings, these are often interpreted as poor judgment or resistance, when they are more accurately understood as predictable stress-state adaptations to overload and urgency. Building on this foundation, the workshop explores Reflective Practice (RP) as a disciplined, team-based approach to stabilizing thinking in real time. Rather than an individual add-on or after-the-fact reflection, RP is framed as an embedded practice that supports better decision-making in the moment—through brief pauses, shared language, and structured meaning-making.
B5: SSW Track – Integrating Solution Focused Interventions Into Schools: Classroom and School-Wide
Susan Lee Tohn
School environments need to be places that are grounded in a "growth mindset", which can be accomplished by administrators, teachers, counselors, maintenance staff, and lunch staff utilizing specific Solution Focused techniques. When Solution Focused practices are employed in schools the research shows that children are more cooperative, with fewer visits to the principal's office, academics improve, and teacher satisfaction increases. These are significant outcomes that most schools desire. During this workshop participants will learn the 3-step process of exceptions, which involves identifying and amplifying when the solution is happening. Participants will learn how to create scaling questions that measure progress on goals. "The WOWW:Working on What Works" workbook will be referenced throughout the workshop. During this workshop, participants will practice specific Solution Focused language in role-play scenarios ,as well as leaving with their own personalized action plan.
Friday Workshops Block C
C1 – Ethical Practice in Small Communities: Navigating Complexity with Clarity
Peg Gregory, LICSW
This workshop provides mental health professionals with essential strategies for addressing the unique ethical dilemmas encountered when practicing in small communities. Participants will explore challenges such as maintaining confidentiality in tight-knit communities, managing limited resources, balancing professional boundaries and working within their scope of practice. Attendees will learn the DEESC tool, developed specifically to provide a framework to apply when navigating these ethical challenges in rural settings. This will occur through interactive discussions and applying the tool to case studies which will support them in making ethically sound decisions and to improve service delivery in small communities.
C2 – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia – Interventions for Sleep
Meaghan McFadden
This workshop will review basic concepts of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi). We will discuss what CBTi is and when it might be effective. We will discuss considerations for assessment, including reviewing criteria for most common diagnoses and working with comorbidities. Finally, we will review 1 to 2 first line interventions that can be used with patients.
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C4 – Hidden Sentence: Children with Incarcerated Parents
Jess Kell & Natalie Dyke
A closer look at the unique emotional, social, and academic impacts of parental incarceration on children. Participants will explore trauma-informed strategies for supporting these children at home and in community settings, strengthen collaboration between community partners to promote resilience, and connect with resources and programs, like Kids-A-Part, that provide information and support advocacy.
C5: SSW Track – How Social Workers Can Help Prevent Harmful Sexual Behaviors
David S. Prescott
Social workers play a vital role in preventing and stopping problem sexual behaviors. This workshop will provide attendees with an overview of current knowledge about effective interventions with adults and adolescents who are exhibiting harmful sexual behaviors. It will review what we do and don’t know about co-occurring problems such as substance use disorders and the need for trauma-informed care. The workshop will review the principles that excellent treatment programs follow and the characteristics of effective professionals. Although no discussion of abuse is ever entirely easy, Mr. Prescott is an expert in the field who creates safe spaces for these discussions.
Friday Workshops Block D
D1 – Your Practice Is More Exposed Than You Think: Ethics, Privacy, and Scams for Therapists
Ami Lynch
Many therapists unknowingly expose sensitive client information through the very technologies they rely on every day, including smartphones, email providers, telehealth platforms, online forms, and common apps that create hidden confidentiality and ethical risks within clinical practice. This presentation explores the growing intersection of therapist ethics, digital privacy, scams, and professional risk management, including how clinicians are targeted by scams and data-harvesting systems and how routine technology use can compromise client confidentiality. Attendees will leave with practical, ethics-informed strategies to better protect client information, reduce liability, strengthen digital boundaries, and ethically navigate modern clinical practice.
D2 – #StayCoveredVT: Learn About Changes to Medicaid and Vermont's Health Insurance Marketplace
Zachary Goss, MSW, MPH
The state of health insurance seems to change every year. Customers must adjust to changing costs, coverage options, and new legislation. Federal law has changed the way states must administer Medicaid and Qualified Health Plans. Open enrollment for Vermont Health Connect goes from November 1 to December 15. Learn about what's changed, how to enroll and how to get help. This workshop is designed to help you stay up to speed on the latest health insurance changes for you and your clients.
D3 – Beyond the Waiting Room: Empowering Parents as Partners in Child Therapy
Alix Reilley, LCMHC and Annmarie Karayianes, LCMHC
Caregiver involvement is one of the strongest predictors of positive outcomes in child and adolescent therapy, yet meaningful engagement can be challenging to achieve. Successfully navigating these dynamics requires intentional, evidence-based approaches that foster collaboration while maintaining appropriate therapeutic boundaries. The course will also explore developmentally appropriate approaches to establishing healthy therapeutic boundaries and promoting balanced caregiver participation that supports child autonomy, resilience, and lasting therapeutic change.
D4 – The Medical, Social and Familial Impact of Long COVID Among Older Adults
Gretchen Kitsos, LICSW
With over 134 million adults in the US living currently with Long COVID, clinical understanding among mental health providers is more important than ever. Long COVID impacts every organ system, includes over 200 symptoms and remains largely misunderstood or not accepted. Unlike most other chronic illnesses, we continue to be unable to project a trajectory of symptom progression or impact, leaving this population with few guidelines, expectations and in some cases, grounds for hope.
C5: SSW Track – Progress, Not Perfection: A Deep Dive Into Collaborative, Proactive Solutions with CPS
Joanne Beck, LICSW
Coverage of concepts and applications of the CPS model created by Dr. Ross Greene. The CPS model is a humanistic approach to change from our current punitive and behavioral approach to how we help children learn in a structured but non-threatening, collaborative and proactive way. This approach solves problems, reduces conflict, improves behavior, and enhances the skills children need to function and learn in a school environment as well as learn communication and self advocacy skills.