March 2 & March 4, 1-4pm CST on Zoom

FREE CEUs available for Social Work and Behavioral Health (6 credit hours for both sessions)

Workshop Description: Reflective Parenting interventions show much promise in improving mental health outcomes through increasing a caregiver’s ability to mentalize. Mentalizing involves the ability to understand behavior in relation to mental states, such as thoughts and feelings, and typically develops within the context of secure attachment. It is the skill of being able to see yourself from the outside and others from the inside. The ability to be a reflective parent and successfully mentalize, has been positively connected to to better caregiving, healthier relationships, increased parental satisfaction and lower parenting stress. For children, having a parent who can use this skill, positively impacts children’s emotional/social development as well as their ability to regulate their behavior. This training will examine this ability in more detail, including how it relates to healthy parenting and positive child outcomes.

Presenter’s Bio: Tina Adkins, MA, MSc, PhD, LPC is a psychotherapist in private practice, who spent a decade as a professor in the School of Social Work at University of Texas in Austin. Dr. Adkins is also a Research Fellow with the International Psychoanalytic Association. She has an MSc in Developmental Psychoanalytic Psychology and PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies from University College London and the Anna Freud Center. She has worked most of her life within child welfare, first as an investigator and later as a clinician and researcher. Her work in family trauma centers around developing and implementing impactful interventions within the field of child welfare, which has resulted in an evidenced-based group mentalizing intervention for foster/adoptive parents called Family Minds.