8:15-8:45           Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:50 – 9:00        Welcome

                        Dr. Jim Zabora, Dean

                        Loretta Vitale Saks, Director of Field Education

9:00 – 10:30      Essential Components of Self Care for Social Workers

                        Dr. Eileen Dombo, Visiting Assistant Professor

10:30 – 10:45    Break

10:45 – 12:15    Sustaining Our Work and Ourselves: The Role of Spirituality

                       Dr. Michael Sheridan, Visiting Scholar and Director of Research, Center for 
    Spirituality and Social Work

12:15 – 1:00      Lunch will be provided (vegetarian option available)

1:00 – 4:00        Ethical Decision-making: An Organizational Approach

                        Dr. Wendy Blome, Associate Professor & Dr. Lynn Milgram Mayer, Assistant Professor

4:00 – 4:15        Evaluations & submission of CEU forms (6.0 CE hours)

Conference is free of charge for 2007-2008 NCSSS field instructors. Questions? Call 202-319-5457.

   Essential Components of Self Care for Social Workers

All social workers have feelings about the work they do. Vicarious trauma and secondary stress often result from working closely with individuals, families, groups and communities that face a variety of issues in social functioning, lack of resources and oppression. This workshop will help social workers identify the impact of their work on their personal, interpersonal and professional selves. It will provide the participant with a self-assessment tool and a concrete self-care plan. It will also give some ideas for addressing self-care on an organizational level.

Sustaining Our Work and Ourselves:
The Role of Spirituality

Social workers often deal with practice situations that can break their hearts, shake their belief that they can make a difference, and test their commitment to the profession. Whether these challenges come through hearing painful life stories, dealing with unrealistic work demands, or struggling to foster change in seemingly intractable systems, practitioners must find something to sustain both their work and themselves. This workshop will explore the role of spirituality – broadly defined – in providing sustenance for this journey. 

Ethical Decision-making: An Organizational Approach

This workshop will present ethical theories and principles while exploring ethical dilemmas from a macro perspective. Participants will work with organizational case examples to explore the application of theories and problem solving concepts.