Clinical Training Day 2024
Thursday, June 13 | Online via Zoom

Join the Blue Cross® and Blue Shield® of Minnesota Center for Rural Behavioral Health along with Susan Herrmann and Tiffany Breckenridge as they lead a two-part training focused on cultural competence and ethics.
 

Part 1 | 9:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Worldview Reflections as a Decolonizing Psychotherapeutic Methodology: Intersections Between Culturally Responsive and Ethical Practice
Susan Herrmann, PhD, MSW, LICSW

The mental health industry has never been busier. The immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19, the era of eco-anxiety, and systemic oppression wreak havoc on individual and societal functioning. Decolonizing our minds is a first step to dismantling the systems that perpetuate our demise. Explicating our unconscious beliefs through metacognition can assist us in identifying our worldview and how it informs what we think and believe, and how we behave. Relying on the findings of her dissertation, and the Worldview Chart (Wahinkpe Topa, Four Arrows), the presenter has crafted a methodology that encourages individuals, couples, families, and communities to grapple with, struggle through, and determine new behaviors that lead to sustainable connectedness. Participants will be introduced to CATFAWN, Concentration-Activated Transformation and Fear, Authority, Words, and Nature, a dehypnotizing technology created by Wahinkpe Topa, Four Arrows to bring worldview into consciousness. Worldview Reflections promotes culturally responsive and ethical practice as it requires us to engage with how the “isms” live in us and are perpetuated. Typical talk therapy is not effective in healing or remedying the trauma we all experience. At best, most therapies teach us how to cope with, or be complicit in, systems of oppression. The presenter draws on Internal Family Systems, Relational Life Therapy, and her own theory of change as decolonizing methodologies pertinent to individual, couples, and family therapy. Join our exploration and develop tools to help us “break up with the Patriarchy."

• Learning Objectives:
  • Participants will be introduced to the Three Traumas we all experience.
  • Participants will articulate the behavioral precepts of the Dominant and Indigenous Worldviews.
  • Participants will recognize their struggles with the Patriarchy/dominant Worldview and articulate them through dialogue.
  • Participants will apply the 9- step CAT-FAWN process to a significant challenge/goal they wish to address to make the world a better place or to address a particular concern.
  • Participants will learn to listen for Worldview in their work and intervene at the Exo-level (values) of analysis.
  • Participants will identify therapeutic modalities that are decolonized.

Part 2 | 12:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Culturally Responsive & Ethical Practice: A Deep Personal Journey of Discovery
Tiffany Breckenridge, DSW, LICSW, LCSW, CCTP

Cultural competence is often viewed as a cornerstone in all helping professions. However, the terminology of cultural “competence” leans heavily on learning about other cultures, but competence also implies to many that there is an end to the journey. Therefore, there needs to be a reconsideration of how helping professions perceive cultural competence and instead initiate a shift toward culturally responsive practice. Culturally responsive practice embraces cultural differences as strengths and is necessary for a healthy environment; embraces the establishment of safety for all; and promotes inclusivity, equity, equality, and justice for everyone in society. While knowledge of other cultures is essential and should be fostered, the presenter will encourage participants to see culturally responsive practice as an inward journey of ongoing deep dive of self-exploration and awareness that goes past the surface level of one’s identity. Participants will be challenged to investigate their own culture that predates their existence and how implicit biases are not just learned but are generational and embedded into one’s upbringing. Participants will explore the culturally awakened model and how it can be applied to their journey of deep self-exploration and awareness. Throughout the training, participants will also recognize that in order to practice ethically, they need to practice cultural responsiveness.

• Learning Objectives:
  • Identify historical underpinnings of cultural competence, culturally humility, and culturally responsiveness.
  • Explore the challenges with utilizing culturally competent language.
  • Describe culturally responsive concepts and the application to practice.
  • Identify ethical considerations of culturally responsive practice.
  • Evaluate key concepts of the Culturally Awaken Model.
  • Apply strategies for deep self-exploration and reflective practices.

Earn CEUs including 4 cultural competence and 2 ethics!

CEU hours approved by the following boards:

• MN Board of Social Work
• MN Board of Marriage and Family Therapy
• MN Board of Behavioral Health and Therapy (LPC, LPCC & LADC) (pending approval)
• MN Board of Psychology
• SD Board of Addiction and Prevention Professionals
• SD Board of Counselor Examiners
• SD Board of Examiners for Counselors and Marriage and Family Therapists
• ND Board of Psychology Examiners
• WI Department of Safety and Professional Services (Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board)

Cost: $89
Group discount rate available for 10 or more - email workforce@mnsu.edu for more information.
 
Meet your trainers:

Dr. Susan Herrmann earned her master’s degree in social work from the Worden School of Social Service at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. The last 30-years of professional practice includes domestic and transnational social work in such settings as residential treatment, outpatient, day treatment, home-based interventions, and child welfare. A veteran of the USAF, Susan has also worked for the Veteran’s Administration and is an advocate for those who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder. She directs a non-governmental organization that provides direct aid to those afflicted with Agent Orange (dioxin)-related maladies in Danang, Vietnam and formerly directed a critical service-learning, study abroad program where American university students engaged in 5-general education courses to build bridges of friendship and cooperation in the aftermath of the American War of Aggression in Vietnam. Susan earned her PhD in Human and Organizational Systems from Fielding Graduate University in 2017. Her dissertation, “Explorations of Global Consciousness, From Emergence Toward Integration” focused on the long term, transformative impact that the Vietnam Program had on students at different points post sojourn. The findings of the study have been integrated into her current clinical practice where she is utilizing worldview reflections as a decolonizing psychotherapeutic methodology. She is conducting research and conceptualizing how Indigenous Worldview provides a roadmap for sustainable mental health and general wellbeing.  
 
 

Dr. Tiffany Breckenridge, DSW, LICSW, LCSW, CCTP is an Assistant Professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato in the Department of Social Work.  Tiffany received her BSSW and MSW from Minnesota State University, Mankato and obtained her DSW from the University of St. Thomas.  Tiffany currently teaches MSW students in both the generalist and specialization year. Tiffany practices clinical social work and is licensed in Minnesota and Wisconsin as a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker. Tiffany has provided licensing supervision in Minnesota for nine years. Tiffany’s practice experience includes medical social work, mental health, child welfare, administrative and clinical supervision, chronic health, and intimate partner violence across the lifespan. Tiffany’s research interest includes culturally responsive practice, trauma-informed care, chronic health, trauma, and social determinates of health.  
 
Registration Questions:  Email workforce@mnsu.edu or call 507-389-1094
Training Questions:  Email elizabeth.harstad.3@mnsu.edu