All Webinars

Humans have long interacted with the natural world, from foraging and hunting for food to more recently, finding solace and peace in a beautiful vista. Our connection to nature runs deep in our DNA, yet our modern world has humans indoors almost 93% of the day. There is growing evidence that being in nature provides a healing elixir for physical and mental ailments. Ecotherapy, a growing but lesser known construct in mental health, describes the reciprocal relationship humans have with nature and the capacity of that relationship to build strength and provide healing. This presentation provides an overview of the theoretical constructs of Ecotherapy with historical considerations and recent research discussed. Perspectives and reflections will be offered through the presenter’s own experience as a former wilderness therapist and current Eco-therapist/Counselor Educator. Examples of practical ways to incorporate Ecotherapy with children and adults, within school settings, in group work and with veteran populations will be provided. Descriptions of other Ecotherapy modalities will also be included, such as animal-assisted, equine, horticultural, forest bathing, green exercise and adventure-based therapy. To bring the content to life, the presenter will add case examples, reflections and experiences with nature as a partner in the therapeutic relationship.

The webinar will cover some of the following:

• Introduce the connection of nature to mental health with an overview of the current research conducted on the connections between mental and physical health and the natural world.
• Provide a summary of the evidence regarding the benefits and therapeutic power of developing a healthy, reciprocal relationship with the natural world.  
• Discuss the theoretical concepts of Ecotherapy from the current literature and how it relates to individual, group and school counseling in diverse populations.
• Outline and describe specific Ecotherapy techniques to use with each client-type and counseling medium (such as individual work, work with children, group work, school counseling) including examples. Ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, gender, ability and age considerations will be considered throughout the presentation.
• Provide resources for viewers to obtain additional information from reliable sources (books, articles, journals).

Social Workers have always helped the most vulnerable people in society.  The current global pandemic brings a period of unprecedented change and stress, which means their needs have increased significantly while their supports may have diminished.  This rapid rate of change and disruption, both personally and professionally, causes psychological stress. This webinar will provide Social Workers with personal and professional strategies to reduce and mitigate the impact of this stress.

The webinar will cover some of the following:

• Learn individual and relational strategies for psychological health and wellness while self-isolating
• Review a framework for practicing trauma-informed social work from a distance and/or during large scale societal change
• Identify strategies to practice social work in a new format (working from home, working via phone/video)

The webinar will cover some of the following about Basic Income:

• First, it will give an overview of the idea of a basic income and of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot
• Second, it will provide preliminary data from a qualitative study conducted in Thunder Bay, Ontario, one of the sites of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot
• Third, it will provide some direction for how basic income and Ontario Basic Income Pilot can be understood in light of social work policy and practice

On the whole the social work literature has insufficiently plumbed the interface of spirituality and social justice for insights into how spirituality inspires a commitment to social justice and how engagement in struggles for social justice deepens spirituality. Thus, the political dimension of the spiritual in the quest for a just world remains underdeveloped and often unnamed in discussions of spirituality and social work practice. In this webinar the presenters highlight key learnings from their recently published book Spirituality and Social Justice: Spirit in the Political Quest for a Just World. They explore the connections between spirituality and social justice and how spirituality can be a powerful force for social justice in social work. 

Webinar Key Objectives: 

To explore the connections between spirituality and social justice activism. 

To accentuate a critical conceptualization of spirituality as a spiritual-political endeavor oriented toward social justice and structures of colonialism, power, and oppression.   

To foster a collective understanding of the ethical and political dimensions of spirituality in social and ecological justice-based social work.

To encourage self-reflection on how spirituality can guide a commitment to social and ecological justice.   

The population of immigrant and refugee children, youth and families in Canada continues to grow rapidly. It is known that positive mental health and well-being are vital to the successful resettlement of newcomers. However, many barriers and challenges experienced during settlement, and a lack of resources for service providers to promote positive mental health, puts the mental health of newcomer individuals and families at risk. To address this, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) Mental Health Promotion Program embarked on a project, funded through a Children’s Hospital Foundation Child Health Advisory Committee (CHAC) grant. This webinar will highlight this innovative project including key themes from the literature review, environmental scan of health promotion practices, and numerous consultations. The development of a strength-based resource intended for use by service providers to promote the mental health and well-being of newcomer families as they settle will be showcased.                                                                                                                                        

Key Learning Objectives:

• To identify key themes impacting newcomer families’ well-being.
• To understand why community member engagement was integral in the development of the Family Tree of Well-being tool.
• To explore the Video Resource, featuring 7 newcomer families, as a way to start conversations about well-being with newcomer families.
• To be introduced to the Facilitator Guide, with step by step instructions to learn how to facilitate the Family Tree of Well-being group activity in Social Work practice.

Our experience and intuition inform us that animals are integral to human health and quality of life. Professional Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) demonstrate how the human-animal bond can create lasting social, emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual and psychological changes. Developing both effective and ethical approaches to the Human Animal Interaction is extremely important when working with a client or clients and animal partners in practice. 

In this webinar, you will be introduced to the components of the human animal bond, develop an understanding of the categories of individuals who may benefit from AAI services, and look at some of the theories relating to AAI. You will also be introduced to appropriate animal partners as well as the knowledge of basic ethical issues, concerns and standards surrounding animals working in therapeutic settings. Finally, you will be introduced to globally recognized standards of care and knowledge of emerging best practices in the field of AAI.

Grief and loss can be a challenging treatment area. Understanding the difference between significant but normal distress and the diagnostic labels of depression and complicated grief can be complex. Likewise, coping with major life transitions can be devastating and result in depression and grief.

This webinar aims to help social workers in any area of practice address the clinical distinctions between depression, normative grief, and complicated grief and understand how other transitional losses might contribute to low mood. Upon conclusion the Attendee should be able to:

1. Feel confident in determining if their client is exhibiting symptoms of depression, and/or normative grief or complicated grief.
2. Recognize the impact of transitional losses such as relationship loss, addiction, retirement, and chronic health issues on the client’s resilience and ability to cope.
3. Have a greater understanding of treatment considerations and therapeutic approaches in dealing with these challenging issues.

Many service providers, including child welfare agencies, face challenges in addressing and responding to child protection concerns in newcomer and immigrant communities. The current model of child protection services in North America is dominated by individualistic social norms. Many minority-status ethno-cultural groups in North America share more collectivist traditions.

Developing more effective and culturally meaningful intervention strategies for identifying and responding to child protection concerns in diverse populations will keep children safe and preserve families. This requires building mutual understanding and trust between the child welfare system and many other communities, especially those who are racialized and marginalized, and this necessitates working together to develop culturally meaningful child protection strategies that are child-focused and family and community-friendly.

This presentation aims to share lessons learned from MRCSSI’s model of collaboration with the Children's Aid Society of London and Middlesex, which led to a dramatic reduction of Muslim children in care. This was achieved by working together to use the Culturally Integrative Family Safety Response approach, which provides space for MRCSSI as a culturally-based community organization to be part of the intervention plan.

The main questions that will be addressed in this presentation are:

1. What are the challenges mainstream service providers face in responding to child protection concerns in newcomer communities?
2. What are the limitations of current strategies and approaches that child protection services use to respond to these challenges and address this gap?
3. How does MRCSSI address and respond to these challenges?

Amid the rise of overt and violent White supremacy, the issue of racism is increasingly framed within the binary of 'good' versus 'bad' - i.e. 'racist’ versus the 'rest of us'. This webinar uses the example of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network to challenge this binary, demonstrating how 'hate' emerges from the same discursive paradigm organizing all of society – indeed, even those very elements dedicated to eliminating hate. Specifically, it describes how this group’s hypocritical labelling of ‘hate’ reflects and reproduces the Islamophobic myth that Muslims are particularly and violently ‘hateful’.

Indeed, in Canada and the US, a person is statistically more likely to be killed for being Muslim than by a Muslim 'terrorist'. That, despite this, Muslims can still safely occupy the status of 'threat' in the public imagination is evidence of this myth's effectiveness in invisibilizing and legitimizing the hate directed against Muslims.

Ultimately, this webinar hopes to demonstrate how, in order to honestly engage with racism, we must move beyond the logic of ‘hate’ that safely situates ourselves outside of it – as social workers in the profession of care; and as people who self-identify as anti-racist. Instead, we need analysis and action that implicates us in the very problem we’re trying to address.

This webinar will also introduce the ‘Islamophobia is..’ project – a new anti-racism educational tool that describes the operation of normalized Islamophobia in the Canadian context through short animated videos.

Webinar Objectives 

- Understand the operation of Islamophobia and other forms of racism beyond interpersonal incidents, finding evidence of its circulation within mainstream media, state institutions, and ‘respectable’ society

- Recognize the discursive continuities between overt expressions of racial violence and the normalized varieties

- Identify the role of racial myths in propelling – invisibilizing and legitimizing – racial activities and outcomes

- Appreciate the limitations of a ‘hate crimes’ approach to understanding and addressing racism, for the way it nurtures a simplistic ‘racist’ versus ‘non-racist’ binary

- Situate ourselves – as social workers and anti-racists - within normalized racism

- Introduce the ‘Islamophobia is..’ series as a new anti-racism educational tool