Topics

•  Introduction and overview
  • Background information
  • Contextual understanding
  • Developmental and contextual understandings
  • Attachment styles
  • Etiological contributors to problematic behavior
  • The role of sexually explicit media
  • Stigma
• The principles of Risk, Need, and Responsivity (RNR)
• Defining treatment and therapeutic change
• Public policy considerations
  • Considerations on racial/ethnic diversity
  • Considerations on family work

Learning Objectives

As a result of completing this course, participants will be better able to:

1) Summarize historical approaches to treating abusive sexual behaviors by youths.
2) List three attachment styles.
3) Explain the importance of working with youths’ families.
4) Examine the role of abuse-related sexual interests, where applicable, in sex crimes by adolescents.
5) Explain the relevance of early-onset, as opposed to adolescent-onset behavior problems.
6) Describe the difference between risk and protective factors.

Topics

• Assessment and Report Writing
• Overview of common ethical issues
• Influential and informative older studies
• Risk and protective factors
  • A review of existing measures for assessing risks, needs, and protective factors
  • A brief review of evidence supporting the existing measures
  • The current status of polygraph examinations with youths
  • Informed consent
  • Confidentiality
  • Interview processes
  • Gendered approaches
  • Stylistic considerations in report writing
  • Structural considerations in report writing

Learning Objectives

As a result of completing this course, participants will be better able to:

1) Describe the core components of a comprehensive assessment (e.g., assessment tools and clinical interviewing considerations)
2) Compare the available assessment measures specific to youths who have abused
3) Explain different domains that contribute to risk for offending
4) Develop an intake interview with an adolescent with problematic sexual behaviors
5) Describe the qualities of a high-quality assessment report
6) Design treatment plans for adolescents

Topics

• Treatment
  • Lessons from history: What can we actually change?
  • Overview of what actually reduces risk
  • Identifying meaningful goals: approach- versus avoidance-based goals
  • “Going upstream” to identify what is important to the client
  • The Good Lives Model as a practice framework
  • Using scaling questions identify and elicit motivation for making difficult changes
• Identifying strengths
  • Trauma-Informed Care
  • Empathy and its role in treatment
  • Treatment implementation considerations and measures

Learning Objectives

As a result of completing this course, participants will be better able to:

1) Apply the “going upstream” method of finding personally meaningful client goals.
2) Differentiate “approach goals” in treatment planning
3) Describe ten “primary human goods” or “good life goals” that appear to be relevant to all human beings
4) Explain how these good life goals can be implicated in sexual abuse by adolescents.
5) Describe how early adversity can develop into risk factors
6) Use scaling questions for assessing internal motivation to achieve good life goals

Topics

• Maximizing Treatment
• Motivational Interviewing (MI) with adolescents who have sexually abused
• How the MI spirit applies to youth
• The critical role of understanding ambivalence with adolescents
• Four primary micro-skills
• The four processes of MI
• Blending MI with the Good Lives Model
• Case examples
• Treatment considerations for special needs clients
  • Research limitations
  • Autism spectrum disorder vulnerabilities and comorbidities
  • “Counterfeit deviance”
  • Commonly reported misbehaviors
  • Adaptation of Good Lives Model
  • Case examples

Learning Objectives

As a result of completing this course, participants will be better able to:

1) Differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
2) Apply a specific method for providing clinical and non-clinical feedback (elicit-provide-elicit)
3) Use specific scaling questions for eliciting intrinsic motivation to change
4) Explain the importance of summarizing statements in expressing empathy
5) Formulate reflective statements to address client ambivalence
6) Describe processes for working with clients who have special needs

Topics

• Boundaries, Ethics, and Professional Development
• Defining ethics (a multidisciplinary approach)
• Why ethics are important
• The big three: beneficence, autonomy, and non-maleficence
• What exactly are professional boundaries?
• Relationships and boundaries
• Principles underlying therapist-client relationships
• Ethics as a process
• Case examples
• Boundary considerations for inpatient and outpatient practice
• Professional development: What research shows
• Self-care strategies specific to work with sexual abuse
• Overview of Feedback-Informed Treatment
• Taking next steps with deliberate practice
• Wrap-up

Learning Objectives

As a result of completing this course, participants will be better able to:

1) Describe healthy and unhealthy professional boundaries
2) Use a structured method for decision-making for complicated ethical considerations
3) Identify barriers to successful treatment implementation
4) Identify signs of vicarious trauma
5) Summarize two measures used in Feedback-Informed Treatment
6) Use a “culture of feedback” to improve services