Why and How Behavioral Health Providers
Should Make Clients' Parental Status Central to Treatment
How many of your clients currently enrolled in your programs are parents of children and youth? How many of your clients are DCF-involved? What do you do when you have a client who’s struggling with parenting responsibilities or is seriously at-risk of losing custody of their child? If you do not have the answers to these questions, then this meeting is for you.
Target Audience: ABH CEOs and senior management, as well as ACCS provider staff and any members interested in learning more about incorporating parental status in their work with clients.
Cost: $50 per person. Lunch is included.
Through a panel discussion featuring experts in family resilience and treating parents with mental health and addiction disorders, attendees will learn about key considerations and strategies to use when working with parents. This meeting will encourage adult behavioral health providers to think about how they are:
- Tracking the parental status of their clients
- Using parental status in the development of treatment planning and goal setting, as outlined in the new ACCS contracts (5.4.2 Persons as Parents)
- Engaging parents in safety planning for their children
- Helping the parent create a family support network that can help with competing personal and family needs
- Supporting the custodial parent in creating a plan for temporary caretaking of the child(ren) in the event of hospitalization.
- Collaborating with providers offering child and family services.
Special Remarks
Joan Mikula, Commissioner, Department of Mental Health
Katherine Canada, Assistant Commissioner, Department of Children and Families
About the Panelists
Kelly English, PhD LICSW Director, DMH Children's Behavioral Health Knowledge Center
Kelly English is the director of the Children’s Behavioral Health Knowledge Center at the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. She is responsible for setting the strategic direction of the Center, consistent with its legislative authorization; developing partnerships with state agencies, community-based organizations, research institutes, and advocates; and developing and managing projects that advance the Center’s mission and the children’s behavioral health system. She has worked in a variety of organizations, including a national consulting firm, MassHealth, and behavioral health provider organizations. Dr. English is a licensed independent clinical social worker and holds a Ph.D. in social work from the Boston College School of Social Work.
Norma Finkelstein, PhD, LICSW, Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Health and Recovery
Norma Finkelstein, PhD, LICSW is founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Health and Recovery, a Massachusetts statewide services, policy, program development, training, and research organization. Prior to this, Dr. Finkelstein was the founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Alcoholism Program/CASPAR, Inc., a comprehensive prevention, education, and treatment program for chemically dependent women and their families. She received her MSW from the University of Michigan and her PhD from the Florence Heller School, Brandeis University.
Joanne Nicholson, PhD, Professor of the Practice, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University
Joanne Nicholson, Ph.D. is a clinical and research psychologist, and Professor of the Practice at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. She is an adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) where she directed the Child and Family Research Core of the UMMS Center for Mental Health Services Research. Dr. Nicholson has established an active program of research on parents with mental illnesses and their families, in partnership with people in recovery. Her team is translating research findings into technology-based applications for parents with mental illness, and evaluating interventions for families, including the pilot Family Options intervention. She is the lead author of Parenting Well When You’re Depressed.
Danielle Sheehan, Client
Daniel Sheehan is a woman in recovery and graduate of a substance use disorder treatment program that integrates parenting and children’s services into treatment. She is a mother of three, and each of her sons have participated in her treatment program’s wraparound services. Moving forward, Danielle plans to continue to foster healthy relationships with her children and family while maintaining her recovery. Today she looks forward to sharing the importance of incorporating parenting support into treatment.
