Motivational Interviewing: Facilitating Family Change

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based approach to helping people engage in and maintain behavior change, and is considered a key skill when facilitating challenging conversations. MI is a collaborative conversation style for strengthening the other’s own motivation and commitment to change. MI is often utilized as an integral part of a comprehensive safety organized practice and can be combined with other interviewing techniques, especially when helping families make healthy behavior changes. This in-depth course has been structured to give social workers an opportunity to acquire, practice and enhance MI skills and strategies.

The training is comprised of two parts:

Part 1: The Skills and Processes of Helping People Change: This is a two-day, in-class session, focusing on key MI skills and strategies.

Part 2: Online learning and coaching to support the classroom sessions: Part 2 is comprised of four online, 1.5-hour meetings, designed to support and enhance MI-consistency.

After completing both parts of this training, participants will be able to:

  • Describe the core components of Motivational Interviewing spirit or style
  • Describe the four processes of MI
  • Utilize skills for enhancing importance, confidence and readiness for change
  • Describe at least three skills for reducing interpersonal discord
  • Identify at least three communication roadblocks that complicate the change process
  • Form reflective statements for demonstrating listening and understanding
  • Form affirming statements to shine a light on strengths, skills and capacities
  • Respond constructively to parent and child statements where there is reluctance for change
Course Code
504605