What does power look like in the physical world? How do we recognize it, repurpose it, and reclaim it? The Great Game of Power is an exercise designed by Brazilian writer and politician Augusto Boal to help audiences visualize and process manifestations of power using commonly available items: chairs, a table, and a water bottle. In this workshop, participants will be given an opportunity to “play the game” and process it together, examining power as a general concept and in their work. Note: This session is limited to 50 participants. This session will be offered twice.

Most people know more about how to program their VCR than their own mind! Dr. Mitchell’s presentation, Priming: Using the Hidden Power of Language for Superior Client Outcomes and Self-Improvement, will teach you how to program the first computer you ever owned--your mind. This dynamic keynote or breakout session introduces the audience to world of priming through a discussion of the priming that occurs in our everyday lives. It then addresses the scientific research, demonstrates the phenomena, and explains how priming can be utilized to radically intensify therapeutic communications and improve outcomes. In addition, these principles provide you with the mental tools necessary for molding yourself into the person you want to be and for reaching your personally desired goals. Specifically, the priming research of the last 20 years has determined that humans are controlled by an unconscious guidance system profoundly more than ever conceived. Priming occurs when something stimulates and triggers behavior. Semantic priming has confirmed the hidden power of words to stimulate preparatory thoughts that trigger new behavior with or without conscious awareness. The most significant finding is that unconsciously created goals can be equal or more powerful than conscious goals and, amazingly, that goals do not require an act of will to be acquired. Yet, the nuances of how new behaviors are stimulated through the precise, meticulous use of language are rarely discussed relative to the therapeutic dialogue and self-improvement. This session will be held twice.

Get your annual legal and ethical CE training in a dynamic, entertaining game show format! This program is designed to test your legal and ethical knowledge while having lots of fun! Management of some of the most perplexing legal and ethical quandaries will be explored. Topics include child abuse, confidentiality, duty to warn, elder abuse, HIPAA, noted legal cases, malpractice, and more. The material is applicable to all disciplines, practices, and states. For more information please visit: www.cliftonmitchell.com. This session will be held twice.

Minnesota strives to ensure safe environments and services for vulnerable adults across our state. We encourage reporting of suspected vulnerable adult maltreatment to protect those we believe are being maltreated. As a reporter, do you ask yourself: “What needs to be in my report? When will an investigation occur? How many reports do I have to make? Why do they ask me for this information? A vulnerable person could be the last person you'd think. Join us because you “CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE!".

This session will cover some tips on how to work with individuals and teams with Intellectual Disabilities and/or Mental Illness. How do we as staff, providers or practitioners work with teams and/or guardians that are "over-protective"? How do we support individuals with teams and/or guardians that are unwilling to explore the goals of the individuals we are supporting? This session will cover tips on conflict mediation, and how to remain strengths-based and person-centered throughout our approach to best empower the individuals we work with to reach the goals they have in life, such as pursuing their own apartments/housing, getting a new job, going on a date, and more. This session will also include tips on how to navigate difficult or 'heated' conversations and situations, and maintain working relationships.

Our purpose is to bring awareness to why positive behavior supports are the best practice. We will give some history and context as to why punishment does not work. Participants will learn some positive behavior support examples and strategies that can be utilized across diagnoses, the life-span, populations, and with their staff. All of the support strategies include the perspective of trauma informed care. Strategies include defining, tracking, and recording behavior for evidence-based decision making.

Minnesota has been touted as one of the best places in the nation to live it terms of affordability, health, opportunity and wealth. At the same time, reports consistently emerge demonstrating that people of color in Minnesota experience significantly higher than average rates of poverty, lower high school graduation rates, low rates of home ownership, significant racial income gaps and higher involvement in the criminal justice system. In our child welfare system, American Indian and African American children have the highest rates of contact with the child protection system, are more likely to be assigned to a family investigation, have higher out of home placement rates and higher re-entry rates and are more likely to enter guardianship. As professionals who care deeply about children in Minnesota, we have the knowledge, passion and desire to understand these disparities and work towards addressing them. Join us to learn about the disparities that overwhelmingly impact African American communities, how these disparities came to be, the role of implicit bias and to discuss advocacy around these issues so that we, as passionate professionals, can work towards change. Note: Participants will be asked to take an online quiz as a part of this session, to fully participate please bring your phone, tablet or a laptop. This is not required to attend the session.

Come learn from a youth's perspective what it's like coming of age in the foster care system. Youth panelists will talk about their experience in care and what their journey has been like as they transition into adulthood. The facilitators will guide this conversation around the services youth received from Connections to Independence (C2i) and how these services were instrumental during this process. Youth will share the brutal truth about their experience and how they achieved their goals. This is an open dialogue for youth and adults to learn and share in a safe forum so we will all leave with a sense of hope and positive outlook for this population that outcomes sometimes seem so dismal.

This session will describe the experience of pilot testing an innovative model in Hennepin County. The program model, the necessary partnerships, and lessons learned will be described in detail. The approach was created to address a common need seen in many counties for options for people recovering from serious mental illness to maintain community stability. In Hennepin County, one of the highest-need populations consists of individuals with serious mental illness who repeatedly cycle in and out of detention, the emergency room, and hospitalization, never receiving the services they need to maintain stable community living. They are likely to have co-occurring substance use disorders, chronic physical health conditions, and issues with social determinants of health (homelessness, poor nutrition, isolation). Hennepin County is implementing an innovative Behavioral Health Center to address these issues. Through partnership and collaboration with Hennepin Healthcare, Minneapolis Police Department & community-based mental health organizations, the Center offers short term care coordination, traditional social services, and physical health care, under one roof. The Center is another option for residents with known or suspected serious mental illness who are picked up on low-level offenses or found to have urgent mental health needs.

There are multiple dimensions of power and control exerted by perpetrators of intimate partner violence—the use of intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, children, privilege, economic abuse, coercion and threats and minimizing/denying/blaming. Similarly, left unchecked, domestic violence shelter policies can reproduce the very dynamics of power and control that victims/survivors of intimate partner violence are fleeing. This presentation examines one shelter’s effort to eliminate the rule book and replace it with a Voluntary Services Model. The Voluntary Services Model (VSM) is considered a “best practice” in providing transitional housing services to survivors of domestic violence by the U. S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (2016). “Voluntary services, as opposed to mandatory services, means that clients do not need to complete a program or take part in other services as a condition of receiving housing. Services are offered based on each person’s specific needs” (U. S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women, 2016, p. 6). Despite the fact that the VSM is considered a best practice in transitional housing services, the implementation of a VSM is an emerging and promising approach for addressing power and control within domestic violence shelter environments.

Are you interested in learning more about making changes through legislative advocacy? This session will provide tips and best practices for successfully advocating at the state level – including how an idea can become a law and how to have impactful meetings with legislators. Participants will increase their knowledge, skills and confidence needed to successfully advocate on issues that they care about.

This session is intended for professionals, family and friends of people with mental illness, disability and/or chemical dependency who may also have child support obligations they are unable to meet. Facilitated by child support officers from Hennepin County and members of the Client Information Sessions team, this session is intended to provide information about the basics of child support modification options to address obligations owed by people who may be or have become impaired since the obligations were set. These clients are often unable to advocate for themselves to pull together the documentation they need in order to file a motion to modify their support obligations, and so the arrears accrue. Orders cannot be modified retroactively, so debt piles up. We will help social workers and caregivers understand what can be done to help their clients address these obligations.