Continuing Education Samples
The following Continuing Education samples are drawn from Lee Ann Hoff’s experience working over the years with hundreds of health and social service professionals, pastors, police, and community-based groups desiring education on diverse crisis topics. Typical sponsors of these workshops have been the Continuing Education departments of universities and hospital departments of professional and staff development. The offerings were approved by various professional bodies requiring continuing education hours as a condition of maintaining current licensure to practice.
On request, Dr. Hoff is available as a consultant for persons interested in these offerings. On request, full workshop descriptions and "Workbook" aids may be shared. Given advances in the crisis field as a whole, a particular interest is in the Trainer-training workshop, and linkage with faculty on curriculum development efforts for health and social services students in colleges and universities.
Workshop and Seminar Topics
- Crisis Care: Key Concepts and Clinical skills (1-day Workshop)
- The Suicidal Person: Prevention, Assessment, and Intervention (1-day Workshop)
- Violence against Women: Intervention, Prevention, Follow-up (1-day Workshop)
- Crisis Intervention, Violence, and Self-Destructive Behavior (3-day Workshop)
- The Multi-agency Client in Crisis (1-day Workshop; 2-hour Consultation)
- Trainer-Training in Crisis Care (3-day Workshop)
- Workplace Violence: Prevention and Intervention (1 to 2-hour seminar)
- Faculty Professional Development: Students in Crisis (2-hour seminar)
- Community Crisis Situations (2-hour Session for Lay public)
Workplace Violence Prevention: Staff Development – General Hospital Setting
This 2 to 3-hour session was designed for professional nursing staff and conducted on-site.
Ideal arrangement includes limiting the session to 30 participants as an aid to discussion in small groups to elicit live examples of abuse, aggression, and violence in the work environment – as an extension of violence evident in other personal and social contexts. Results of small group work are shared with the large group for critique, consensus, and prevention strategies.
WORKSHEET: APPLICATION OF VIOLENCE
PREVENTION/INTERVENTION STRATEGIES
Directions: "Numbing" is a factor not only for those who are violent, but for also for would-be victims and professionals in a position to make a difference. In small groups, consult the list of Personal/Social-Psychological, Sociopolitical, and Professional Strategies. Select a situation affecting one or more group members and develop an Action Plan to implement specific strategies to prevent violence and/or intervene in an abusive situation. For example: Fear for one's children at school or on the street; battering or intimidation by one's partner (or someone one knows); threats in the workplace by a disgruntled employee or bullying by a colleague.
1. Describe the situation and major factors surrounding it; e.g., personal failure, history of abuse/aggression in family, racial or other discrimination.
2. What are the power dynamics operating in this situation?
- From the victim/survivor perspective:
- From the assailant's perspective:
- From the perspective of the listener, observer, or health or social service worker:
3. Identify the immediate and follow-up needs to be addressed in this situation:
- For the victim/survivor:
- For the assailant/abuser:
4. Identify at least one behavior or strategy to prevent abuse/violence and care for survivors in this situation in each of the following categories (keeping empowerment in mind):
- Personal/Social-Psychological:
- Sociopolitical:
- Professional:
5. Identify at least two immediate follow-up steps that can be taken on this issue after this workshop.
Continuing Education for Victim Witness Advocates – MOVA Academy
This 40 hour week-long program is sponsored by the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance (MOVA) housed in the office of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston, USA. It is offered in partnership with diverse public and community agencies, colleges and universities. The program is designed to provide early career victim service providers (with less than 5 years’ experience) an in-depth understanding of crime victims’ experiences across time and systems. Its multidisciplinary design gives attendees a clearer understanding of how their work fits in a victim/survivor’s overall experience.
The program speaks to the workplace reality of applicants to MOVA with basic college degrees, but whose formal education did not include the essentials of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Skills needed for effective work in this field. Typically, such applicants are not graduates of professional social work or nursing programs which in any case, as already noted, do not systematically prepare them for expert work with victim/survivors, including the legal parameters that victim/witnesses in the judicial system must master. As such, this program addresses key aspects of the CORE content described above and in Chapter 3 with the distinct element of assisting victims through the often prolonged and debilitating shoals of the criminal justice system – typically, well beyond the healing from physical wounds of violence and the social-psychological fallout over time if and when survivors seek legal redress for what they have suffered.
For further information about this program (which is being replicated in other jurisdictions in the U.S), contact: www.mass.gov/mova, or for MOVA Listserv: mov@state.ma.us