Family Partnership Training Institute
NFSTAC launched our free, self-guided online course Partnering with Families in Behavioral Health: The FAMILY Approach in early 2024. The FAMILY Partnership Training Institute offers an opportunity for providers, wraparound facilitators, and others in the behavioral health workforce to deepen their understanding of skills to develop effective partnerships with families. In this Training Institute, course authors will lead sessions where attendees will receive additional training on the topics of each lesson and have a chance to role play and converse with peers about applying these skills to develop and maintain person-centered, family-driven partnerships.
Join us in an information session on October 16th, 2:30 p.m. -3:30 p.m. ET to learn more about the FAMILY Partnership Training Institute, including how to apply.
Schedule
Seven Monthly Sessions on Wednesdays 2 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET from December 2024 – July 2025:
December 11th – Getting to Know Each Other and Introduction to Family Partnerships, Person-Centeredness, and Family-Drivenness
January 8th – Facing Personal and Professional Attitudes
February 12th – Acknowledging Family Identities and Expertise
March 26th – Making Meaningful Partnerships
April 16th – Identifying Solutions to Conflict
June 4th – “Letting Go” to Support
July 2nd – Yielding to Outside Supports and Wrapping Up
Apply
To join the FAMILY Partnership Training Institute, participants must apply by completing the application at the link below, which asks each person to answer a few questions about their work with families and what they hope to learn in the Training Institute.
Candidates will be contacted by November 25, 2024 with notification of whether they have been welcomed into the FAMILY Partnership Training Institute. Please hold time on your calendar for all seven sessions, listed above, as you await decisions.
About the Institute
The FAMILY Partnership Training Institute is designed to support providers, wraparound facilitators, and behavioral health professionals who frequently work with families or who would like to more effectively work with families deepen their understanding of evidence-based skills that result in authentic family partnerships.
Participants in the FAMILY Partnership Training Institute will get the most benefit from this program if they attend all seven sessions and complete the associated lesson within the online course Partnering with Families in Behavioral Health: The FAMILY Approach before they come to that month’s session. Each month, our facilitator will provide training that enhances participants’ understanding of the skills introduced in the online course through the FAMILY method. Participants will reflect on their own bias towards families’ relationship to their loved one’s mental health challenge and treatment, as well as families’ bias towards the medical and behavioral health systems. They will also learn about the importance of families’ lived expertise and cultural differences; conflict resolution skills to use and share with families; how to address and avoid power differentials between providers, individuals, and family members; and how to connect families with crucial supports such as family peer support and resources to navigate family-serving systems.
In each monthly 90-minute session, the facilitator will extend the learning about the topic introduced in that month’s online lesson before inviting participants to put their knowledge into action through role plays and other interactive exercises. Each month, participants will have an opportunity to bring challenges they’ve encountered about partnering with families to the team for discussion.
Our goal is that you leave the FAMILY Partnerships Training Institute with a toolbox of strategies, resources, and skills that will prepare you to develop and maintain partnerships with families that will better support families and their loved ones as they navigate behavioral health and related systems.
Staff
Lead Facilitator - Dr. Marianna Farkas, ScD
Facilitator Marianne Farkas, ScD will be the lead facilitator of each session, bringing her training and family lived expertise into the didactic portion of each meeting, as well as the role plays and discussions.
Dr. Farkas is a Professor (Clinical) at Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Boston University, with lived experience as a family member of an individual with a mental health condition. She has authored or co-authored over 170 journal articles and book chapters, 4 textbooks, and 10 multimedia training packages for professionals and peers. As one of the founding members of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, she has developed innovative training, consultation and organizational change strategies and initiatives to support programs and systems in their efforts to adopt psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery innovation both in the U.S. and in more than 25 countries around the world. Dr. Farkas has been recognized with multiple awards from the field as an educator, innovation leader, and advocate/ researcher, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from NYAPRS. She received the National Commendation Award from NARRTC for “pioneering scientific advances that have helped transform research on mental health and rehabilitation systems and being at the forefront of a paradigm shift that has helped practitioners, families, and society, as a whole, to see capacity and potential in all people, including those with psychiatric disabilities.”
Facilitator - Gail Cormier
Facilitator Gail Cormier, MS will infuse her family lived expertise into the co-facilitation of sessions.
Gail Cormier brings over 25 years of experience providing national and statewide technical assistance and expertise working with families, youth, and young adults. She is a proven national family leader with both professional and family lived experience. At the national level, she partners in the development of federal programs that serve at-risk and vulnerable individuals, families, and their children-of-any age. For 14 years, Gail served as Executive Director for North Carolina Families United, Inc., the North Carolina state affiliate of the National Federation of Families. She provided oversight for the SAMHSA-funded Statewide Family Network grants in New Hampshire and North Carolina from 1996-2019. She supports family organizations, family peer support, and policy making boards that aid the growth and development of child, youth, and family-serving systems within peer organizations statewide and across the nation. As Project Director, Gail manages the day-to-day activities of the National Family Support Technical Assistance Center (NFSTAC). As a long-term advocate of social justice, Ms. Cormier strives to ensure that all individuals find mental health and substance use services in their home communities that best fit their needs—no matter their age, gender identity, race, or economic background.
Coordinator - Dana Asby
Coordinator Dana LaBranche, MA, MEd will be participants’ point of contact, coordinate all session materials, and add a family lived experience perspective to monthly session discussions.
Dana LaBranche is a developmental and educational psychology researcher and author, as well as a mental health and transformational leadership educator. She has a passion for helping all members of the family use their strengths to find person-centered solutions to challenges. Dana applies her lived experience as a family member to those with mental health challenges, her own recovery from traumatic experiences, and a decade as a teacher in preschool to junior high school classrooms to her current work in behavioral health. Before joining the National Federation of Families as a Project Specialist and National Certification Manager, she worked primarily on school and youth mental health training and technical assistance. She was the Director of Innovation & Research Support at the Center for Educational Improvement and Education Coordinator of the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center for several years. Dana co-authored a book called Compassionate School Practices. As a trauma-informed yoga teacher with neuroscience research experience from the Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University, Dana shares her knowledge of how mindfulness and community can change the structure of the brain to help heal the effects of attachment disorders, mental health challenges, trauma, and toxic stress.