Introductory Level

• Increasing awareness and knowledge
• Basic skill building
• Organizational/community
• Ethics and cultural competence

Advanced Level

• Culturally competent interviewing, assessment, intervention
• Family centered practice with specific cultural groups

Supervisory Level

• Recruiting, retaining and managing a diverse workforce

The Changing Face of Iowa
This training brings into focus the changing patterns of diversity in Iowa and how diversity, culture and privilege affect our everyday actions and decision-making.  Participants will practice perspective-seeking and perspective-taking skills which are critical to developing respectful cross-cultural relationships.  A model for individual, intraprofessional and organizational change is discussed, and participants plan for continued development of cultural competence.

Strength-Based Approaches to Reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC)
This popular training is designed for professionals working with youth and their families in juvenile justice, schools, child welfare and community settings.  Case examples and small group exercises are used to illustrate how recognizing the resilience of families, working with families' strengths, and strengthening communities can reduce disproportionality.  Participants leave the training not only with new insights and inspiration, but also with new skills. 

Ethics and Cultural Competence
This training focuses on NASW Code of Ethics standards for culturally competent practice as well as the relationship of cultural competence to other NASW ethical standards.  Cases are introduced to explore potential bias in assessing and responding to diverse families and to underscore the ethical hazards of individual and/or organizational cultural incompetence. 

Culturally Competent Family-Centered Practice (Organizational Level)
This training was developed to assist organizations in increasing their level of cultural competence. The training focuses on how culture affects worldview, communication, assessment, goal setting, and intervention. Some of the areas addressed include: personal awareness, language, knowledge of community, agency policy, identity development, the use of ethnographic tools, environmental factors, and the organizational development of a comprehensive family-centered cultural competence plan.

Bringing People to the Table to Assist Minority Youth
The focus of this session is the coalition building skills needed when governmental departments, community organizations and other stakeholders join forces to deal with difficult community issues like disproportionate minority confinement. A special emphasis will be given to community involvement, goal setting, resource development, leadership development, and public awareness campaigns.
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Advanced Level
Culturally Competent Interviewing Skills
This training focuses on culturally competent interviewing skills, including awareness of cultural taboos, nonverbal language, and the use of translators and interpreters. This skill-based workshop is highly interactive, with considerable time spent in practicing tools on participants' case examples.

Healing and Revival of the Family Spirit
The greatest strength a family has is its spirit. Family rituals have enabled the family to survive for centuries. This workshop focuses on using family rituals to rekindle family spirit. The use of family rituals in case management, family development, and family therapy are explored.

Advanced Practice:   Culturally Competent Child Welfare Practice
This skill-based training focuses on culturally competent engagement, assessment and case planning skills and closure in child welfare work.  The workshop is highly interactive, with considerable time spent in practicing tools on case examples.  Participants will learn how to tailor interventions for the family's culture. 

Family-Centered Practice with Diverse Families

An advanced training module designed for organizations that are interested in specific ethnographic skills and tools to work with a specific client population such as African-American families, Latino/a families, Native American families, or new immigrant families.
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Supervisory Training
Recruiting & Retaining a Diverse Staff

This workshop explores the role of staffing in developing organizational cultural competency. We discuss issues of organizational preparedness, recruitment, retention and the development of an organizational culture in which people of all backgrounds can thrive, contribute, and develop necessary competencies for a diverse workforce. We examine participants' organizations and work together to define actions to create an organization with a culturally diverse and competent staff. Participants should bring information about: the demographic make-up of paid and unpaid staff (including volunteers, board of directors), demographics of clients (i.e., service users, patients, customers), and a demographic profile of the community, as well as any general brochures and/or staff-related materials that are currently used in the agency.

Managing a Diverse Workforce

This training increases managers' competence in managing diverse workforce dynamics. 

Topics include the impact of majority/minority dynamics. how to use perspective-taking to manage those dynamics, and skills for effective communication across social and cultural difference.  We explore how managers can work with majority identity workers to build their commitment to diversity, and how to integrate that commitment throughout the unit and organization. 

Supervision of Intergenerational Diversity

This popular workshop explores the strengths of generational diversity in the workforce and the accompanying supervisory challenges.  Supervisors participate in exercises in perspective taking to better understand how to attract and retain a generationally diverse workforce and how to effectively manage intergenerational conflict.
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