Click here to view registration rates, the session schedule, and more.
Attendance Certificates:Available at no cost for attendees after each session *Must complete evaluations*
In Partnership With
ACRC SPONSORSHIP
$20,000 - Windy City Includes 8 in-person registrations and virtual ‘all in’ registration for the entire organization. Also includes a half page ad.
$15,000 - Chi-Town Includes 5 in-person registrations and virtual ‘all in’ registration for the entire organization. Also includes a quarter page ad.
$10,000 - Magnificent Mile Includes 4 in-person registrations and virtual 'all in' registration for the entire organization
$7,500 - Grant Park Includes 3 in-person registrations and virtual ‘all in’ registration for the entire organization
$5,000 - Navy Pier Includes 2 in-person registrations and virtual ‘all in’ registration for the entire organization
$3,000 - Millennium Park Includes 1 in-person registrations and virtual ‘all in’ registration for the entire organization
$1,800 - Riverwalk Includes 1 in-person registration or 3 virtual attendees
$500 VOICE Champion Sponsor the travel of our Youth Advocates
Early Bird In-Person Registration Rates
ACRC Members - $795
Non-Members - $995
+ $100 after February 2, 2026
please register early!
Any issues registering as a member, please contact: Amanda
CONFERENCE WEBSITE
Virtual Registration Rates
ACRC Members
Individual Rate - $200
'All In Staff Rate' - $1,100
Non-Members
Individual Rate - $275
'All In Staff Rate' - $1,500
The ALL IN staff rate allows for anyone in your organization - staff, foster parents, board members, volunteers, etc. - to join at no additional cost. (Note: CEUs are purchased per person.)
Any Issues Registering as a member please contact: Amanda
All keynotes and select workshops held in-person will be recorded or live streamed (and recorded) and placed on the virtual platform. Preconference's, Issues Lunches, Awards Lunch, & Policy Meetings will not be recorded.
To view a list of the current workshops CLICK HERE
Preconference Opportunities
DIRECT CARE PRECONFERENCE - Knowing Better, Caring Better: Innovations in Transforming Youth Residential Practice
RESTORATIVE CIRCLES PRECONFERENCE - The Transformative Power of Restorative Circles
COMMUNICATIONS PRECONFERENCE - Messaging What Matters: Communication Strategies That Inspire Trust and Action
FAMILY PEER SUPPORT PRECONFERENCE - Commitment to Knowing Better: How Integrating Peer Support Helps Us Do Better
this registration is for a 1 day preconference ONLY
Webinar Overview
Beth Casarjian - The Lionheart Foundation
Kelli Root - Kentucky DCBS
Rashmi Brown - CHES Solutions
James Wade - Maryhurst
It is increasingly understood that creating transformational and healing spaces for youth is deeply tied to how well we apply the same trauma-informed principles to the practices, resources, and support we offer our direct care workforce. Post-COVID, residential agencies in the state of Kentucky faced notable levels of staff burnout, challenges with retention, and elevated staff and youth critical incidents. In 2024, leveraging their existing partnership with CHES Solutions Group which spearheaded the BBI Collaborative Cohort Initiative across the state of KY, leadership at The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS), Department of Community Based Services (DCBS), Division of Protection and Permanency (DPP) initiated a multi-year program to support the well-being of staff in residential settings.
The proposed presentation will share a highly innovative model of cross-sector partnership, including Kentucky’s state child-welfare system, two private, child welfare non-profits, and 23 private residential providers to deliver EQ2, a workforce wellness and support program, state-wide. Developed by The Lionheart Foundation, EQ2 is a trauma-informed, self-regulation program specifically created to support direct care staff working with trauma-exposed youth in residential settings. EQ2 helps staff in building the fundamental self-awareness and self-regulation skills required to deliver TIC, while providing access to resources shown to buffer individuals from secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and turnover.
This presentation will explore how the EQ2 KY residential cohorts were created and buy-in was built, offer an overview of the EQ2 state-wide onboarding and implementation approach, and share successes, challenges, and insights gained from a large-scale implementation across a highly diverse state. In addition to leaders from The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Human Services, CHES Solutions Group, and The Lionheart Foundation, the lead EQ2 facilitator from one of the 23 participating residential agencies, Maryhurst, will share the impact of the project on staff and youth in the agency.
Attendance Certificates Available
*Must watch webinar LIVE to receive Certificate
*Each individual requesting a Certificate, must be registered and logged in to zoom under their own name
If you have questions, please email Amanda.
The session will highlight the best practices for completing an assessment on a youth who has engaged in sexually harmful behaviors. Topics will address when it is appropriate to complete an assessment and the necessary components within the assessment. Discussion will address the impact and danger of using risk labels for youth. Also, a review of the literature will be provided regarding protective factors versus youth’s risk factors. Lastly, appropriate treatment recommendations for the family and youth with sexually harmful behaviors will be explored.
Participants will have a:
Compassion is empathy grounded in action. It occurs when we take a step away from empathy and ask ourselves what we can do to support the person who is suffering. During this training, participants will learn the definition of compassion and explore why it matters in the workplace. Included will be experientials to further practice strategies for taking action with compassion.
Participants will be able to:
*Each individual requesting a Certificate, must be registered and logged in to zoom under their own name.
In the demanding world of family and child services, organizational culture is often felt but rarely defined in actionable terms. How can leaders move from simply having a culture to intentionally shaping one that actively supports staff well-being and the consistent use of evidence-based practices?
This 90-minute, interactive workshop is designed for leaders and practitioners from residential treatment centers, foster care agencies, and other family-serving organizations. We will move beyond theory to provide practical tools for diagnosing your current cultural landscape and strategically aligning it with your mission.
Using a series of collaborative activities, participants will:
•Diagnose their organization's culture using a simple, powerful framework to understand underlying values and tensions.
•Analyze systemic barriers that impact staff fulfillment and can hinder the faithful implementation of proven practices.
•Craft a compelling, data-driven narrative that connects daily tasks to resources and environmental factors, making the case for effective, evidence-based work.
•Leave with a starter kit of actionable strategies to foster a more resilient, effective, and intentional organizational culture.
For many behavioral health organizations, the journey to becoming trauma-informed begins with a series of trainings. Yet, a significant challenge remains: how to sustain and embed these principles so they become a lasting part of the agency’s culture, not just a fleeting initiative. This presentation offers an innovative approach that leverages accreditation standards as a powerful framework for sustaining trauma-informed care (TIC).
Based on our collaborative work, we propose a model where accreditation standards are seen not just as a compliance requirement, but as a powerful strategic framework for organizational change. We will demonstrate how seemingly disparate standards—from personnel development to crisis protocols—are, in fact, interconnected and support the creation of a safe, respectful, and resilient environment.
Instead of simply reviewing standards, our session will be an active workshop where we will present a unique Trauma-Informed Surveyor Checklist that assesses the deep integration of TIC into an agency's culture. This checklist can also be used by leaders to evaluate trauma-informed care at their agency. This tool looks for observable evidence and asks probing questions to determine if an organization has truly adapted a trauma-informed worldview, rather than just "checking boxes." Key areas of focus will include:
• The critical role of staff well-being as the foundation for client healing.
• The application of core principles like "symptoms are adaptations" to reshape how services are delivered.
• How to build a culture of safety and de-escalation that aligns with the principles of polyvagal theory.
Participants will leave with a practical, actionable framework for transforming compliance into a powerful lever for cultural change. The session will be interactive, providing agency leaders and staff with the tools and mindset to confidently prepare for accreditation while strengthening their commitment to sustaining trauma-informed care.
Staff turnover continues to strain youth residential care programs, disrupting continuity of care and the therapeutic relationships that support young people’s progress. One key driver is that direct care staff and supervisors are often asked to manage complex clinical and behavioral needs without the depth of training, coaching, and day-to-day support required to feel confident and effective. In this webinar, we will present the impacts of a workforce development model, GuideTree, designed to strengthen staff knowledge, confidence, and evidence-based practice skills across a broad range of youth needs. The program also supports supervisor and organizational capacity by providing a shared language and therapeutic framework to guide intervention planning and implementation.
The session will feature lessons from the implementation of GuideTree in a Therapeutic Residential Care program at Hoyleton Youth & Family Services, where program leaders partnered with an evaluation team from the UConn School of Social Work to assess early impact. Presenters will describe staff and supervisors experiences implementing GuideTree in a real-world residential setting, including key implementation facilitators and barriers, strategies for sustaining coaching and supervisory supports, and how the model fits within daily operations. We will also share preliminary findings from a mixed-methods evaluation examining changes in staff and supervisor perceptions (e.g., skills, knowledge, confidence, job satisfaction) alongside youth-level indicators drawn from administrative data (e.g., progress toward treatment goals and critical incidents).
Designed for residential and community-based providers, supervisors, and administrators, this webinar highlights GuideTree as a practical, scalable approach to strengthening the workforce and supporting more consistent, therapeutic care for young people.
Learning Objectives
In this interactive presentation participants will explore how the evidenced based treatment model Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), a treatment developed for individuals with disorders of emotion regulation, suicidality, and self-harming behavior (Linehan, 1993), was blended to meet the needs of clients and families in a 34-bed locked facility. DBT has been adapted across multiple settings and has been adapted for specific populations but is implemented as a standalone model either standard DBT, DBT-A for adolescents, or DBT-C for Children. This presentation will discuss how all three models were blended to meet the complex needs of clients in a residential locked treatment facility. How staff were trained and DBT was implemented and how adherence is maintained will also be explored. Outcomes of the implementation of this rigorous evidence based treatment model such as increased family involvement, decreased physical restraints, length of stay and readmissions will also be identified.
Participants will
For this webinar, we will discuss the challenges faced by LGBTQIA+ youth in the foster care and residential treatment center communities and general strategies for supporting and creating a sense of inclusion and belonging for these youth. Specifically, we will discuss how we implemented these strategies in JCCA's residential treatment center located in Pleasantville, NY by creating an annual Pride parade and expanding activities and information based on feedback received from clients and staff. This discussion will include the successes and challenges of our strategies as well as plans for moving forward with developing and implementing strategies that increase understanding and celebration of and advocacy for LGBTQIA+ youth in general and for those youth in residential treatment centers specifically. There will also be time for dialogue about what is working or not working at other treatment centers or facilities and opportunities for brainstorming and developing strategies for continuing to build positive LGBTQIA+ communities in residential settings. The workshop will include a PowerPoint presentation as well as tangible examples of our work.
Every year, nearly 400,000 children pass through the foster care system. Today’s child welfare policy considers a permanent family setting a “right” for all children removed from their family of origin. As mandated by the Adoption Assistance & Child Welfare Act (AACWA) of 1980 and the Adoption & Safe Families Act of 1997, all children in custody must have a “permanency plan.” A permanency plan legally mandates connections to family and caregivers in a form of a “forever home.” There are four ways children leave foster care for permanent homes: reunification with birth parents or primary caregivers, adoption, guardianship, and placement with relatives. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, among children exiting foster care each year, nearly half, about 100,000 kids, are reunited with a parent or primary caretaker. Unfortunately, every year, approximately 20,000 youth leave foster care without a permanency plan.
The child welfare system placing 100,000 children in “forever homes” should be applauded by practitioners and policy makers alike. However, when one takes a deeper dive behind the numbers and applies the concept of “ambiguous loss,” the idea of achieving permanence, at least for the youth removed from their families, isn’t so clear.
Ambiguous loss, a term coined by psychologist Pauline Boss, is a loss that remains unclear and without official verification or immediate resolution, which may never be achieved. The people we love can be (1) physically gone but kept psychologically present (i.e., a missing person) or (2) physically present but psychologically gone (e.g., someone with dementia, or drug addiction).
Researcher Gina Samuels, and others, has applied the concept of ambiguous loss to children who have been removed from their family by children services and or juvenile court and transitioned, often, depending on the circumstances in an out-of-home care. Samuelson (2009) wrote, “The use of ambiguous loss theory provides a compelling lens to theorize (im)permanence and examine the very notion of what is ‘family’ from the perspective of young adults who have aged out of foster care.” Writers Lee and Whiting proposed a third element of ambiguous loss that foster children may experience: relationships in transition. “Relationships in transition” refers to individuals in the foster child’s life may be perceived to be active members of the birth family, the foster family, or both. However, many of these relationships may not be permanent. Children services and or the courts can reunite or disband birth families and children may or may not be adopted by their foster family. Add relative placements or kinship care to the child’s life and often boundaries become unclear about who is supposed to be regarded as family and who is only temporary. For the child who is amid multiple transitioning relationships, feelings of confusion, hopelessness and ambivalence typically impede progress identifying and fulfilling case goals toward permanency.
The relational push and pull for children in congregate care can be especially stressful and confusing. Youth are given the message to cooperate with the program, open-up and trust the staff, get better, then they have to say goodbye.
This presentation will include the results of Samuelson’s research project looking at the impact of ambiguous loss through the interviews of 29 youth placed in foster care, group homes and residential programs. Samuelson concludes that youth often consider the loss of their family long before children services steps and, perhaps even more compelling, youth have their own idea of “permanence” regardless of the “official” permanency plan.
This workshop explores how coordinated, wrap-around support systems can strengthen outcomes for families facing complex social, economic, and educational challenges. Participants will examine how schools, nonprofits, healthcare providers, and government agencies can work collaboratively to reduce service fragmentation and ensure families receive timely, holistic support. The session will highlight practical models for cross-agency communication, referral pathways, and shared accountability, while clarifying how federal, state, and local government programs can be leveraged effectively. Attendees will leave with concrete strategies for building partnerships, aligning services around family needs, and navigating public benefits to promote long-term stability, resilience, and well-being for children and caregivers.
Group Registration - To register a group, please contact Wendy at wendy@reclaimingyouthatrisk.org or by phone at 605-906-4694
Students experiencing homelessness often navigate instability while still being expected to thrive academically and emotionally. This webinar shares findings from a qualitative action research study identifying social work interventions that strengthen resilience through engagement, advocacy, and cross-system collaboration. Participants will gain practical, research-informed strategies to enhance stability, engagement, and protective factors for youth experiencing housing instability across residential, school, and community settings.
This presentation offers a critical evaluation of the phenomenology and treatment of disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD), a pediatric depressive disorder added to the DSM-5 in 2013. The presentation begins with a historical overview of the DMDD diagnosis and a discussion of how this history paved the way for current clinical practices. It then turns to what is known about DMDD today, reviewing and synthesizing research on its clinical presentation, associated features, prevalence, comorbidities, developmental course, functional outcomes, and risk factors. This review highlights areas of consensus and controversy, revealing DMDD to be an empirically nebulous construct with unresolved questions about its reliability and validity. Implications for diagnostic accuracy and the selection of appropriate and effective interventions are discussed. The following question is posed: Is there something happening in chronically irritable youth that is not being captured by the DMDD diagnosis as it is currently defined? The presentation subsequently examines points of overlap between DMDD symptomatology and trauma-related sequelae. Areas of convergence that are discussed include shared clinical features, such as pervasive emotional and behavioral dysregulation, aggression, attachment disturbances, relationship difficulties, attentional problems, and functional impairment. Shared risk factors are also discussed, including dysregulated temperamental profiles, neurobiological abnormalities in emotion regulation and impulse control, and — most notably — histories of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The presentation highlights parental psychopathology, substance abuse, separation, domestic violence, emotional abuse, intergenerational trauma, and poverty as salient predictors of DMDD onset and persistence. Emerging evidence is reviewed, indicating that, for at least a subset of youth, DMDD symptomatology reflects the effects of complex trauma. The presentation then reviews current assessment and treatment practices for DMDD, offering a critical evaluation of their utility for DMDD youth with and without trauma sequelae. The paucity of the evidence base is highlighted and discussed as an ethical concern, especially in regard to pharmacological interventions, which are frequently given precedence over psychotherapy. The presentation underscores the urgent need to integrate trauma-informed principles into every stage of care for DMDD, as current approaches may not only be ineffective but also potentially harmful for the subset of youth whose DMDD presentation represents, or is compounded by, trauma-related pathology. The presentation concludes by arguing for a paradigm shift in how the field conceptualizes irritability and aggression in youth — moving away from viewing these symptoms as signs of something inherently wrong within the child, and toward seeing them as signals to ask what has happened to the child.
Northwest Children’s Home, a 117‑year provider of services to vulnerable youth, has undergone a significant transformation in its approach to residential treatment. Historically, children were admitted for care without parallel support for their caregivers which contributed to fragmented treatment outcomes. Over the past decade, the organization recognized the need for a family‑centered model and began re‑envisioning its continuum of care. In 2020, the agency initiated efforts to develop a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (PRTF) after witnessing Idaho youth being sent out of state for services, often resulting in disrupted family connections and inconsistent treatment quality. These experiences in addition to experiences with two youths placed cross‑country during COVID‑19 and one returning with progress and another with significant harm—underscored the urgency for an in‑state, relationally grounded program.
To build a model that prioritized family involvement, the agency conducted extensive research, toured programs across multiple states, and engaged consultant Dr. Randy Moss. Through national site visits from other ACRC provider members in Idaho, California, North Dakota and Oregon, the team identified key practices to integrate into a new Idaho‑based PRTF. Northwest Children’s Home combined existing strengths—Trust‑Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) and the UKERU restraint‑free model—with Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) to create a unified, trauma‑informed, family‑driven framework. The resulting program, Canyon View, operates with a 1:2 staff‑to‑client ratio, accommodates varying acuity levels, and embeds families directly into treatment through caregiver training and structured family therapy.
This webinar will outline the development process, lessons learned, and the successes and barriers encountered. The Canyon View model offers insights for similar organizations seeking to build or refine PRTF services, particularly those aiming to strengthen family engagement, reduce out‑of‑state placements, and create cohesive, trauma‑informed treatment ecosystems.
Quality improvement depends on a workforce that is not only skilled but also sustained. This interactive session equips participants with self-compassion practices that fuel the capacity to thrive in demanding roles. By reframing self-compassion as a professional competency rather than a luxury, Fueling the Work demonstrates how tending to the well-being of staff supports organizational excellence. Attendees will leave with accessible, repeatable practices to strengthen resilience, improve relational care, and ensure enduring commitment to quality.
How it Connects:
Self-compassion connects directly to quality, outcomes, and sustainability because staff who are regulated, compassionate toward themselves, and able to reset can provide higher-quality care and stay in the work longer.
1. Understand the role of self-compassion in sustaining quality care and why it is essential for professionals in human service roles.
2. Recognize systemic and personal barriers to self-compassion that contribute to burnout and impact outcomes for staff, children, and families.
3. Practice evidence-based, trauma-informed self-compassion strategies that strengthen workforce resilience and innovation in daily practice.
4. Identify at least one sustainable self-compassion practice to embed in professional or organizational routines, supporting continuous quality improvement and long-term impact.
REGISTRATION RATE
£275/$375 Early Bird* - Register by 30 June £350/$475 Full Rate
Outcome measures help us understand our impacts, communicate them, and make targeted improvements when we miss the mark. Organizations providing multiple services in multiple locations or by multiple teams can struggle with developing meaningful measures to assess end-of-service outcomes. Nexus Family Healing provides an array of services along the behavioral health continuum in five states. To develop outcomes, Nexus utilized its accreditation framework, harnessing program data and the practice wisdom of clinicians and staff to identify one to two powerful measures for each service line. To date, this multi-year effort has produced five of 11 planned service line measures that are available to all staff, reviewed regularly, and utilized by other key departments such as marketing and communication and development. This high-level understanding of impacts has already produced key learning on ways to adjust practices to drive better results for clients. Nexus will share this approach as it can be replicated by any size organization.
This webinar explores the shifting dynamics of the global workforce in residential child and youth care programs, with a particular focus on the lived experiences of immigrant practitioners. Drawing from personal narratives and frontline practice, the session highlights how immigrant child and youth care practitioners—often navigating systemic barriers and cultural transitions—bring unique perspectives and resilience to therapeutic care environments. The immigrant experience, intertwined with hopes, losses, and grief, mirrors many of the challenges faced by the youth they serve. These voices, often underrepresented, are integrated throughout the presentation to illuminate both the challenges and strengths immigrant practitioners contribute to the sector.
Child and youth care practitioners come from diverse backgrounds and bring a wide range of personality profiles, social lifestyles, and motivations to the profession. Some are driven by altruism, others by a commitment to social justice or personal experiences. These varied motivations enrich the field and shape the ways in which care is delivered.
Innovative approaches rooted in human-centered design are showcased, emphasizing culturally responsive care, community representation, and the importance of lived experience in shaping effective interventions. The presentation also examines workforce trends in Alberta and Canada, including demographic shifts and the growing presence of African and Indian practitioners in frontline and leadership roles.
Throughout the session, I will share personal stories of overcoming challenges as an internationally trained immigrant professional practicing child and youth care in Alberta, Canada. These experiences have shaped my approach to human-centered design and professional practice, connecting theory with real-world application. The voices and experiences of practitioners will be integrated throughout the presentation to enrich learning and reflection. Participants will be invited to consider how organizations can better support immigrant professionals and leverage their unique strengths to improve outcomes in residential care.
Understand the impact of immigrant professionals on residential child and youth care programs. Identify barriers and opportunities in integrating internationally trained workers. Explore innovative, culturally responsive approaches to care. Recognize the value of lived experience in workforce development and leadership.
Despite an increased understanding of how youths’ trauma exposure impacts their mental and behavioral health, less is known about direct care staffs’ early adversity and its impact on their ability to provide high-quality, trauma-informed care to youth. While staff with histories of early adversity often report high levels of motivation for this work, they are also at greater risk for work-related negative psychological outcomes, including secondary traumatic stress and burnout, which can increase the probability of critical incidents, restraints, and re-traumatization for both youth and staff. Coupled with nationwide reports of high turnover rates, a system’s understanding of and responsiveness to staffs’ history of adversity is now as important as any other component of trauma-informed care. However, to date, there has been no study evaluating the prevalence of adversity in a sample of direct care staff only. This presentation presents preliminary findings from the Staff Stress and Support Survey, a nationally representative study of direct care staff from US-based residential treatment centers. Data regarding ACE prevalence (using the Expanded Philadelphia ACE), Professional Quality of Life, and burnout will be presented. The presentation will conclude with a brief discussion of best practices for supporting staff who may be coming to their roles with elevated histories of adversity or trauma, highlighting innovative ways to build skills related to staffs’ self-awareness and self-regulation, as well as agency-level practices that build trauma-responsive cultures.
Every young person deserves meaningful connections to their kin, community, and culture—regardless of their placement setting or the length of their involvement with child welfare. A KinFirst approach prioritizes intensive family engagement and service efforts, spanning prevention through permanent custody and beyond. This webinar explores an innovative, real-time implementation partnership designed to enhance family search and engagement for youth in congregate care settings, facilitating safe transitions directly to kin. Participants will gain insights into lessons learned from groundbreaking public-private leadership initiatives, cross-sector strategies, and family-centered approaches with families. Shared examples will highlight the critical role of a KinFirst philosophy across all facets of child welfare—workforce development, organizational practices, provider collaboration, and courtroom advocacy.
