Effective Strategies for Testing Individuals with Criminal Behavior and Addiction with Felesia Otis, BS, CADC II, QMHA and What is the Future of Social Care and Social Change? Skills for Helpers and Change Agents with Laura Nissen, Ph.D., MSW

Please join us for the upcoming training on Wednesday, January 5th for Effective Strategies for Testing Individuals with Criminal Behavior and Addiction with Felesia Otis, BS, CADC II, QMHA and What is the Future of Social Care and Social Change? Skills for Helpers and Change Agents with Laura Nissen, Ph.D., MSW

All proceeds go towards the Al Forthan Scholarship. 

Effective Strategies for Testing Individuals with Criminal Behavior and Addiction

Featuring: Felesia Otis, BS, CADC II, QMHA

When:  8:30am-12:00pm

Purpose

The purpose of this training is to gain an understanding of the research on what puts people at risk of being involved in criminal activity. Touch on learning on how risk and protective factors can assist helpers in targeting appropriate interventions for change. Lastly, obtain the latest information about best practices currently being used with the criminal justice populations.

Felesia Otis, BS, CADC II, QMHA

Felesia Otis has 30 years’ experience in substance abuse programming and addiction treatment for men, women, and youth involved in the criminal justice system.  She is currently working in VOA’s Hope Outpatient Clinic where she provides guidance and supervision for culturally responsive programming and services for high-risk criminal justice populations. Felesia also provides consultation technical assistance to agencies who are looking to integrate evidence-based practices and culturally responsive services and interventions into their treatment programs.     

What is the Future of Social Care and Social Change? Skills for Helpers and Change Agents

Featuring: Laura Nissen, Ph.D., MSW

When: 1:00pm-4:30pm

Purpose

What do you think social care and social change will look like in the year 2032?   Will there be more of the things you care about - and less of the things you don't want to see?  How will technology, climate change and other ecosystemic factors like the future of work, public health, migration and others influence the landscape of what social care and change means and looks like?    What are the biggest threats to an anti-racist, high equity, and effective/accessible care landscape in the years to come?   More importantly - will you be ready?  Will human services be ready?  Are we learning all we can from essential and important social change leaders who are giving a "window" on how social change will shape the future?   This session will introduce helping professionals to the concept of "futures thinking" and "foresight" to help envision how changes in the world today (both wanted and unwanted) will likely shape what happens next.    Exploring issues of utopias vs. dystopias, agency vs. inevitability, and the use of imaginaries and collaborative learning to prepare yourself, your organization and the community you live in, for the future you want is the focus of this workshop.   Come prepared for an unusual and engaging session to help you expand your sense of your own and your professions' futures.

Laura Nissen, Ph.D., MSW

Former Dean and Professor Laura Burney Nissen has been a member of the PSU/School of Social Work community since 2000.   She is currently the first inaugural Presidential Futures Fellow at Portland State.  She began her tenure at PSU in a leadership role with the national Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative Reclaiming Futures (still operating in the Regional Research Institute in the SSW). 
With a long-term commitment to innovative systems change (her research portfolio includes a focus creativity and innovation in macro level social work systems change), Laura has worked with futures practice and lenses throughout her career. She credits a futures lens with the extended and continuous success of the Reclaiming Futures initiative and its ability to energize and provide architecture to a complex and interdisciplinary juvenile justice reform effort extending beyond a decade beyond its original “demonstration” phase. She has brought futures thinking into the School of Social Work in the form of a first strategic plan at the school in its 55 year history. She is in the a foresight practitioner and a Research Fellow with the Institute for the Future, and has spoken on futures thinking in social work and social change at the National Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work, and in numerous social work education, and community spaces.  She has taught and done research in a variety of social work/social change practice areas including addiction practice, equity and social justice, social work and the arts, lifelong learning for social work and macro social work.

To Register, please click below

If you have any questions please contact Tessa Fowler at tfowler@voaor.org or call me at 503-802-0299