Trauma-Informed Motivational Interviewing is designed to decrease barriers and increase readiness to make a change.

We specialize in training non-profits that work with vulnerable populations, such as child welfare, community mental health, and social services agencies. We focus on teaching social service providers to better partners and engage to increase trustworthiness and collaboration, improving outcomes.

Simultaneously, we train organizational leaders on how to build these skills into supervision and other organizational change efforts needed to support ongoing fidelity with MI. We use principles of implementation practice to do that, based on individualized consultations. We help you select fidelity tools and practice supports to keep MI alive in the practice setting.

We want to help you develop a plan for sustaining Ti-MI in your agency so you can make the most of your training dollars. Our training packages are very affordable, often comparable to what some trainers charge for 3 days of training. Our highly interactive training is offered live online in ten-week sessions, typically followed by 6 months of coaching. We are transparent, honest, and passionate.

TRAINING

We work with community practice settings to train staff and supervisors in trauma-informed motivational interviewing, while working with admin teams to identify facilitators and barriers to maintaining MI practice. We want our training to stick.

COACHING

Research says that the best way to incorporate MI in your practice setting is to engage in ongoing coaching. We provide one-on-one and group coaching sessions to individuals and supervisors so that fidelity is supported in practice.

CONSULTING

The best way to institute an agency-wide, evidence-based practice is to incorporate it across the agency and support it from the administration down. We help agencies with organizational and outcome targets.

A way of having a conversation about change.

Motivational Interviewing is a very specific way of having a conversation about change. In Motivational Interviewing, practitioners learn to elicit client change talk and reinforce it when it happens. Research says that the more clients talk about why they want to make a change, the more likely they are to stick with it. But that's not the whole story: research also says that the relationship between the practitioner and client is an essential component of client outcomes. Motivational Interviewing is a way of having a relational and connected conversation about change that moves clients toward making changes in their lives.

An evidence-based practice.

Evidence-based practices are those interventions for which a number of studies suggest that the practice leads to good outcomes for clients.  Motivational Interviewing has been researched across many populations, from youth to older adults, and across many types of difficulties - from job search to smoking cessation to health maintenance to opiate abuse. Anywhere that a person may be struggling with making or maintaining a change, Motivational Interviewing may be a helpful intervention.  Although Motivational Interviewing is a stand-alone intervention, it can work alongside other evidence-based approaches, such as Solution Focused Therapy or Trauma Informed Care.

A valuable
clinical skill.

Who uses Motivational Interviewing? Child welfare workers, program assistants, case managers, medical providers, supervisors, and therapists: Motivational Interviewing is adopted across disciplines. Motivational Interviewing is a teachable and learnable framework made up of many concepts, and it takes time to learn. It cannot be taught in two hours. In fact, research says that the best way to learn Motivational Interviewing is through hands-on workshops followed by coaching or skill review and ongoing practice.  It may take some time to become skilled in Motivational Interviewing, but you can start using some of the techniques of Motivational Interviewing after just a little exposure. Motivational Interviewing works best when used consistently, but even the inclusion of some of the tools can improve how you work with the people you serve.

Motivational Interviewing is considered a well-supported practice in child welfare, rated three stars by the Family First Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse. We provide trauma-informed child welfare training focused on supporting agencies to help children grow up in safe, stable, and secure families. Learn more about our training for child welfare agencies and staff here.