More Than the Substance: Understanding use, reducing harm, guiding change with young people

This one-day workshop offers a practical foundation for engaging in helpful conversations. You will build your working knowledge of alcohol and other substances and how to assess use without alienating the person in front of you.
Participants will be guided to explore what to notice, which validated screening tools to reach for, and how to make sense of what a young person is saying within a harm-reduction and health-based frame.
Motivational Interviewing (MI), an evidence-based, collaborative style of conversation designed to strengthen a person's own motivation to change will be highlighted as a practical tool to be added to your toolkit. Rather than trying to convince, warn or "fix," you'll practice drawing out a young person's own reasons for change, so that therapeutic engagement, the single strongest predictor of a good outcome, is where you begin, not where you hope to end up.