I just received an e-mail advertising this course, group therapy via telehealth at William James College. The course is completely free.
I will mention that I have taken it before, and honestly, it's kind of eh. But it is free.
There was a lot of ableism, such as insistence that group therapists should always have the zoom chat turned off and ignoring of comments by a few of us that using chat is an accommodation for neurodivergent folks, as well as citing neurodivergent presentations as screen-out criteria for appropriateness for group therapy.*
Also, just, why would you not leave chat on? Why would you not want people to be able to type "be right back" if they need to use the restroom rather than interrupting? Why would you not want someone to be able to drop a helpful link in the chat if they're mentioning a resource? If for some reason you find people are saying off-topic or disruptive things in the chat, then you use your group leadership skills and remind people that we need to maintain one conversation at a time, and chat comments need to be on the same topic as the out loud conversation aside from quick "be right back"-type comments.
*I will die on this hill: The "I don't work with the autistic 'population' though" talk from so many providers is incorrect and damaging. You do work with autistic people. If you work with people at all, about 2-5% of them are autistic. If you work in mental health or medical settings, you might be seeing 10-20% autistic folks, but if you are insisting you don't, you probably are relying on stereotypes of young white boys and don't actually recognize autism. Also, along those lines, some colleagues and I are working on a project about completely abandoning the idea of "populations" and recognizing that cultural competence is primarily a mindset, while at the same time we should all have basic familiarity with experiences that occur fairly frequently.
Further reading:
1 in 5 adults presenting to outpatient psychiatry are autistic
Autistic traits found in 20% of young adults seeking addiction treatment
I don't know of any studies on rates of autistic and other neurodivergent presentations in parents involved in the child welfare system, but anecdotally it's very very high, with no acknowledgement whatsoever that it's an area of needed cultural competence.
I have no affiliation with Williams James College other than minimally as someone who periodically supervises interns for them. I post free/low-cost CEUs I find in order to promote equity and representation in the field, and sometimes share my own personal thoughts about the trainings and/or the trainer.
