Strengthening Case Management

While most torture treatment centers maintain a strict division between mental health and case management services, mental health concepts can be appropriately adjusted for use in a case management setting. This webinar series expands on an often limited view of the role of case managers in the treatment of torture survivors. While it does not advocate that case managers become therapists, it suggests they adapt psychoanalytic theory to their jobs in order to promote “empathetic connections” and “safe spaces” in their relationships with clients.

• Strengthening Case Management: The Value of the Therapeutic Dimension. This webinar is designed to offer service providers practical ways to introduce therapeutic concepts into torture survivor case management. Utilizing a psychosocial perspective, participants will learn specific ideas in which case managers can address survivor needs at the interpsychic and interpersonal levels.
• Strengthening Case Management: Introducing Narrative Concepts. This webinar presents narrative therapy as a potential approach for case managers (CMs) to apply when working with torture survivors.  Using narrative concepts, case managers can use therapeutic questioning to help clients recognize and reflect on their current problems and to empower clients to re-examine and reframe their lives. Please note this webinar does not qualify anyone to do narrative therapy.

• Strengthening Case Management: Containment With Clients. This webinar is intended for case managers (CMs) who work with clients that are unable to control their emotions during stressful situations. To begin, participants review the relationship between emotion, stress, and the brain. Participants then learn three containment strategies appropriate for CMs to use with emotionally unstable clients. This webinar focuses on best practices for CMs to use during client eligibility screenings.

• Strengthening Case Management: Case Management and the Suicidal Client. This webinar is designed for case managers who work with clients who have attempted suicide or expressed suicidal ideation. While mental health staff are responsible for the evaluation and treatment of suicidal clients, survivors may also reach out to case managers for help during times of crisis.  For this reason, case managers should also be prepared to identify risk factors, protective factors, and become familiar with basic suicide intervention skills.  This webinar will present the QPR method (Question, Persuade, Refer) as a culturally-sensitive, case management appropriate response to suicide intervention.

Presenter

Joan Hodges has worked with vulnerable immigrant populations for the past eight years, both domestically and abroad. She is currently a Refugee Services Program Officer with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). At USCRI, Joan uses her clinical case management background to provide technical support and in-house training to 35 refugee resettlement affiliates across the U.S. Joan received her Master’s degree in Refugee Care from the University of Essex in partnership with the Tavistock Clinic in London, England. Joan is also the former Lead Case Manager of the Program for Survivors of Torture and Severe Trauma in Northern Virginia.