Conference Program:

Conference Proceedings

1. Pre-conference Board Meetings
2. Opening Session
   • Welcome
   • State of ACCTA Address

1. CE Program Descriptions & Learning Objectives
   
2. Insider’s Guide to ACCTA
3. Frequently Used Acronyms

Continuing Education (CE) Programs

Keynote Presentation (1.5 CE's)
Sunday, 9/11/16, 8:30-10:00 am

The Ethic of Self-Care: Enhancing Personal and Professional Lives
Melba J.T. Vasquez, PhD, ABPP

• References 

This presentation will focus on our ethical responsibility to ensure our competence, which can be compromised if we neglect self-care.   The APA Ethical Principals of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (2010) includes the General Principal of “Beneficence and Nonmalefience.” The Principal obligates us to strive to benefit those with whom we work and to take care to do no harm. Because our judgments and actions may affect the lives of others, we are encouraged to strive to be aware of the possible effects of our own physical and mental health on our ability to help those with whom we work. Failure to engage in self-care can result in the experience of depletion, discouragement and burn-out, with negative consequences to ourselves and to consumers of our services. This presentation will describe strategies to prevent those conditions, promote self care, boost resilience and thrive.

Diversity Scholars Presentations (1.5 CEs)  
Sunday 9/11/16 1:30-3:00pm   

The Safe Zone Symbol: Its Impact on Attitudes Toward Seeking Mental Health Services
Marshall Bewley, PhD, Texas Woman’s University

Efforts to combat the stigma and discrimination that LGBTQ individuals faced has been done through providing ‘Safe Zones.’ However, research has not investigated the impact that a Safe Zone Symbol has on clients’ willingness to seek treatment from a mental health facility until now.

Supervisor Awareness and Strategies for Addressing Racial Trauma Among Trainees of Color
Carlton Green, PhD, University of Maryland, College Park

Increased attention to police-involved violence toward people of Color has supposedly stimulated a “national conversation on race.” Amid the emotionally-challenging “conversation,” trainees of Color may experience racial trauma, which negatively affects their functioning. This session will enhance trainers’ competence for assisting trainees in identifying and coping with racial trauma.

Passages (2.0 CE's)
Sunday, 9/11 3:15-5:15 pm 

• Passages Presentation
• Passages Stages 

Carmen Cruz, PsyD

Passages is an ACCTA tradition at the annual conference. The passages program is offered to provide Training Directors an opportunity to engage in small-group discussions related to professional development topics. Traditionally, Training Directors self-identify with one of six developmental stages: Entry, Identity/Immersion, Doubt, Re-immersion, Continuously Evolving, or Exit. More detailed descriptions of each stage and related prompting questions can be viewed on the ACCTA website. 

SCD Sponsored Program (1.5 CE's)
Monday 9/12 8:30-10:00 am

What Happens When the Political Becomes Personal?  Social Justice and Training Issues
Debra Crisp, PhD, Kym Jordan Simmons, PhD, SCD-Steering Committee Members

This year has seen a number of social justice issues rise to the forefront. These issues include: the call for a wall to surround the U.S.; fear of deportation or expulsion for immigrants; Transgender rights; the continued focus on Black Lives Matter; the resulting All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter and racism in criminal justice system. As training directors it is important to monitor our own thoughts and feelings around these issues as well as providing a safe space for our interns to process these issues. This program will begin in a large group where stimuli for each of these topics will be presented. Participants will then break into small groups based on self-selection to discuss the issue(s) which are most salient to them. Participants will then re-assemble so that the large group can hear what has been said and add any comment they might have. There is a possibility that Ad Hoc groups may rise out of these discussions.*

Concurrent Sessions (1.5 CEs)

Sunday September 11, 2016 10:15-11:45 am
Concurrent Session 1

Leading by Example: Training Directors as Models of Self-Care
Cathye Griffin Betzel, PsyD, Mack Bowers, PhD, Daniela Linnebach Burnworth, PhD

• References 

Training Directors serve as primary role models for interns who are being socialized into the profession. This presentation will provide perspectives on “leading by example” through exploration of our integration of self-care principles and the ways in which these practices inform training and leadership roles. Participants will focus on the ethics, attitudes, and practical behaviors pertinent to maintaining professional and personal life balance in the face of the demands placed on training directors. This presentation will also contain a relaxing experiential component. 

Clarifying our Barriers to Self-Care: An Experiential Workshop Using Functional Subgrouping and Force Field Analysis (Overview & References) (Force Field Handout)
Brent Elwood, PhD  

Taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually is a necessary precondition to be able to effectively support our clients, trainees, and colleagues. Given the demands on our attention, even taking the time to clarify our wants, needs, and forces that influence us can be challenging. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to explore experientially in a group what inhibits them from setting and maintaining boundaries to support their own self-care. Participants will be introduced to and use functional subgrouping and force field analysis to explore the barriers and incentives to initiating and maintaining self care. *                                                                                                                                         

• Handout

The program provides an opportunity for attendees to reflect on their own models for teaching multicultural competence and how they compare to two individual models shared by presenters. Discussion will focus on relative strengths of varied approaches and identifying core components in multicultural training models for doctoral internships. 

Starting an Internship from Scratch: A Recipe for Success
Amber R. Cargill, PsyD, Emily Russell Slife, PhD

This presentation will provide necessary "ingredients" for creating a successful internship program from scratch. Hear about trials and triumphs from two training directors who have completed their second year of new internship programs. Both training directors are in various stages of the application for initial accreditation process (i.e., site visit completed, self-study submitted). Reflections, guidance, and resources will be provided in order to minimize challenges when implementing a new internship program. We will discuss the process of creating a psychology internship in a university counseling center setting and provide detailed information on training needs, tasks, and the role of a training director in a university counseling center.

Tuesday September 13, 2016 10:30am-12:00pm
Concurrent Session 2

Deconstructing Safety
Daniela Linnebach Burnworth, PhD, Michele Willingham, PsyD 

This program seeks to engage participants in an exploration of the meaning of and implications for “safety.” We aim to deconstruct the notion of “safety” and the frequent process of conflating “safety” with “comfort.” We will examine how expectations for “safety” can interrupt efforts to engage in courageous conversations related to social justice, as well as the self-examination needed for ongoing multicultural competence and growth in supervision, and discuss setting expectations within our training environments around safety and the need for discomfort to occur.

When Things Don’t Go According to Plan: Lessons Learned About Remediation Plans for Trainees  (Sample Remediation Plan) (Sample Acknowledgment of Policy Documents)

Michael Jay Manalo (Jay), PhD 

What happens when a trainee’s development of professional competence does not go according to plan and implementation of a remediation plan is necessary? How as a Training Director does one engage in the difficult conversations that ensue while tracking a trainee’s progress on a remediation plan? And what happens if the remediation plan itself does not go according to plan, a trainee does not agree to a remediation plan, or a remediation plan is ultimately not successful?

This presentation will review of relevant literature discussing best practices in the management of problems with professional competence and the remediation of these problems. The presenter will also discuss case examples, lessons learned from his own work with trainees who were on remediation plans, and sample communications strategies and documentation of remediation plans. Finally, the importance of self-care for trainees, supervisors, and the Training Director during the implementation of the remediation plan will also be emphasized.

Peer Supervision for Licensed Supervisors: An emotion and supervisor-focused model.
Natasha Maynard-Pemba, PhD

The presentation will include information about emotion focused peer supervision for supervisors (not trainees). Often in supervision consultation with our peers we focus on the supervisee and what to do to ameliorate the particular supervision issue. However, it can also be as, if not more, fruitful to focus on the supervisor’s experience on an emotional and less problem-solving level. The format of the presentation includes didactic information describing the model. However, the presentation will be highly experiential in nature so that participants can experience how the model works. Discussion of diversity issues regarding how it affects and is incorporated into this model, will be addressed.*

Evidence Based Practice in a Generalist Setting: Implications for Training
Donna McDonald, PhD

The SOA ask that we prepare interns to competently use evidence based practices (EBP) in the implementation of clinical services. Competencies include the ability to develop and use evidence based intervention plans as well as the ability to apply scientific literature to practice. In 2006, the APA Presidential Task Force on EBP defined it as the “integration of the best available research with clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences” citing that its purpose is to “promote effective psychological practice and enhance public health by applying empirically supported principles of psychological assessment, case formulation, therapeutic relationships, and intervention (APA, 2006). Thus, ensuring intern competency in EBP entails an understanding of the current empirically validated treatment literature as well as the research regarding a number of client and relational variables. This presentation examines this issue and then outlines potential areas of EBP training. 

Tuesday September 13, 2016 2:00-3:30pm
Concurrent Session 3 

Intern Self-Care Training: Strategies for developing self-care competencies leading to ethical, sustainable practice in health service psychology.
Charee Boulter, PhD, Kristen Davis-John, PhD, Michele Willingham, PsyD 

Maintaining healthy self-care is an ethical obligation for every psychologist. Living a balanced life and practicing self-care is crucial to our professional ability to be present and competent with our clients. Our interns need to learn how to engage in self-care to manage/prevent burn out and support their longevity as competent psychologists well beyond their internship year. This presentation will incorporate didactic and experiential components focusing on ethics, secondary traumatization, communitarian training culture, and related strategies for teaching and modeling self-care to interns.

Beyond Jihad: Understanding the Muslim world
Durriya A. Meer, PsyD 

In the current sociopolitical climate, Muslims are in the limelight for many reasons, unfortunately, none of them positive. Muslim students on campus have reported feeling increasingly unsafe and the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report shows a steady increase in hate crimes against Muslims – from 11.6% in 2012 to 13.7% in 2014. This is despite there being a drop in the number of hate crimes across the country, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2015). This presentation aims to increase awareness of the religion (as practiced around the world), how to work effectively with Muslim students and trainees and ways in which a counseling center can forge relationships with Muslim-identified groups across campus. A related objective is to understand the diversity within Islam which is mostly perceived as a monolithic religion. 

Co-Supervision: Shaping a relational process in the training of supervision competence
Jonathan Schmalz-Benson, PhD, Randal Boldt, PsyD

This presentation will present a co-supervision model used for training doctoral interns in the provision of supervision to practicum students. Facilitators will describe standard models of supervision of supervision and will then provide the rationale and a description of the co-supervision model. Facilitators will also provide preliminary qualitative interview data from recent interns and practicum students regarding their experiences and opinions of the impact the model had on their training. Significant attention will be paid to reflecting on the relational and multicultural components of this model, as the increased number of identities in the room enhance opportunities for relational and cultural dialogues. The challenges of addressing the levels of power in the triadic relationship, while modeling for trainees what it looks like to “power with” them, will also be explored.

Implementation of the Fair Labor Standards Act: Implications for Training Programs
Karen M. Taylor, PhD, Joyce Illfelder-Kaye, PhD

This program will provide an overview of the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act and its impact on training programs. Strategies to comply with the regulations will be explored. Results of a survey of ACCTA members regarding these strategies will be presented. Audience will participate in discussion of a range of implications of this legislation on issues such as total internship direct clinical service and overall internship hours. The social justice issue of adequate compensation will also be discussed. 

Innovations Showcase Presentations
Tuesday 9/13/16 5:30-7:00 pm

Unpacking the Diaper Bag: Navigating Maternity Leave and Parenthood as a Training Director
Alia Fons-Scheyd, PhD

There are many unique elements in navigating a medical leave process and parenthood while leading a training program. The presenter is a counseling center training director who has recently returned from maternity leave, and was formerly an assistant training director and supervisor who previously took maternity leave. Areas discussed will include arranging appropriate supervisory and administrative coverage, processing the experience with interns and trainees, interfacing with administration, planning for the experience of both leaving and returning, balancing personal and professional self-care needs, ethical considerations, and setting appropriate limits and boundaries, and generalizability of maternity leave experiences to other forms of leave or family leave. Practical considerations will be discussed and tips provided as well as issues and questions for processing and personal consideration, reflection and resolution.

Live Demonstration: Using the AAPI Online Data Download for Intern Selection
Cecilia Sun, PhD  

A tutorial for an optional Excel tool (“TD Database”) used by many TDs to manage intern selection data. Come see a step-by-step demonstration of the AAPI Online Data Download and how the spreadsheet can be used to inform intern selection decisions. Experienced users are invited to share innovations and suggestions. 

Integrating Positive Psychology Concepts into your training program.
Jeffrey Volkmann, PhD, ABPP  

This presentation is designed to teach training directors how to integrate positive psychology techniques into their training program. Positive psychology concepts such as gratitude, human strengths, savoring, meaningfulness, and humor will be discussed in relation to intern development. Additionally, the positive psychology component of a cultural self-study that is completed by interns at my training program will be outlined in the presentation. The presentation will have an experiential competent where participants will complete some of the exercises interns complete at my training program. Finally, presentation attendees will learn how to modify and/or create their own Positive Psychology training interventions.

*Presenter indication of stressful content

APA Post-conference Workshops