Facilitation Skills for Child and Family Team Meetings – Demonstration and Skill Practice

Level: Advanced Practice – Lineworker

Credits: 3

Intended Audience: This course is intended for line workers to build their skills in facilitating Child and Family Team Meetings. In this half day training, trainees will learn
the strategies and skills for helping groups solve problems and build agreement to enhance the safety of children and families. This training is an adjunct to the one day Child and Family Team Meeting Facilitation training.

Description of Course: This is an experiential training for facilitators of Child and Family Team Meetings in child welfare agencies. The purpose of Family Team Meetings of any type is to build agreements between the Department, families, providers and other essential team members. It is largely the responsibility of meeting facilitators to bring a very disparate group of people into CFTMs and build critical agreements and decisions.

Intended Objectives:

• Demonstrate basic facilitation skills (i.e. helping the group stay focused on key issues, insuring participation by all individuals present, reach shared agreements, etc.)
• Demonstrate balanced attention to relationship, process and outcomes within facilitation
• Demonstrate respectful engagement of participants in CFTMs through challenging conversations (such as conversations in which families and the Department disagree about risk/safety; conversations in which power differential of participants can be inhibiting the process)
• Actively encourage and support parent, child, and meeting attendee’s participation.

Topics Include:

• Purpose, Desired Outcomes, and Context of Meeting
• Building Agreements
• Facilitation Skills
• Network/Stakeholders
• Individualized Care/Safety Plans
• Next Steps