Applying Motivational Interviewing Skills: From Individual Skill Building to Systemic Advocacy

This two-day training introduces trainees to core foundation of MI skills and examines the many systems with which clients interact in order to support a deeper understanding of the client within the context of their experience of historical and current marginalization and community resiliency. Attendees will examine Macro MI specific applications of the Spirit of MI, the Four Tasks, and OARS. Attendees will also assess systemic stressors and strengths and use this knowledge to increase client safety, broker connection to community change agents, and identify policy level change areas.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the tenets of The Spirit of Motivational Interviewing and why each is a necessary piece of the foundation of MI
• Demonstrate the core skills of Motivational Interviewing (OARS) and apply them to practice sessions.
• Define Macro Motivational Interviewing as a systems intervention that pays attention to larger social structures that shape the lives of individuals seeking services.
• Integrate Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems model into OARS using specific verbalizations of systemic barriers to change
• Distinguish between change talk, sustain talk and client verbalizations of harm
• Describe DARN CATS and how this mnemonic tool helps assess for and strengthen change talk