Seeds of Change Consulting provides training, supervision, and consultation with a focus on providing individually tailored, strength-based treatment to clients. All services include an examination of the idea of “resistance”, the subsequent clinical challenges arising from this discord, and how to strategically address these challenges through the use of Motivational Interviewing and other forms of strength-based assessment and treatment.
Seeds of Change Consulting teaches concrete skills so service providers can experience a sustained increase in strength-based assessment and treatment, resulting in improved client outcomes.
Director of Seeds of Change Consulting-Sarah Solis LCSW
Director of Seeds of Change Consulting, Sarah Solis LCSW, has 20 years of experience providing care to clients impacted by trauma. She is currently employed as a Clinical Case Manager at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sarah acts as the Team Lead of a multidisciplinary group of providers supporting unhoused or tenuously housed Veterans who have been diagnosed with a severe mental illness, substance use disorder, complex medical needs, and/or low social support.
Sarah has worked in corrections, community mental health outpatient and day treatment programs, and community-based services for children and families. Sarah has acted as a direct service provider, clinical supervisor, and worked as a program manager for many years. Sarah also taught Motivational Interviewing to social work graduate students at the University of the Pacific.
The majority of Sarah’s service provision experience has been with underserved and
marginalized populations. She has been co-facilitating Macro Motivational Interviewing
trainings for 6 years, with a focus on supporting clients in safely navigating oppressive
systems, the use of Motivational Interviewing to facilitate calling-in, and affecting larger
systems’ change that supports client readiness.
Sarah has been training for 17 years and completed the Motivational Interviewing
Network of Trainers (MINT) training program in 2017. She remains an active member.
Philosophy
Most service providers enter their prospective fields with the intent to facilitate change for their clients in a strength-based manner. Barriers to seeing this intent through include:
- The service provider’s experience and internalization of a historical or current deficit-based work-place culture
- The mandate to collaborate with individuals or agency partners that utilize a deficit-based approach, and the service provider’s internalization of this view of the client
- Federal, state, or county service provision rules that reinforce deficit-based treatment
- And, of course, the service provider’s lived experience and, at times, the application of this lived experience as the only context to understand the client (transference/counter-transference)
Seeds of Change Consulting normalizes the service provider’s experience of these impediments and assists in the learning of a more strength-based and effective approach.
Services
Trainings
Half-Day Motivational Interviewing Training – This 4-hour training provides attendees with a basic understanding of Motivational Interviewing. Attendees will learn how to assess a client’s current motivation to change a particular behavior and then learn how to use Motivational Interviewing Open-Ended Questions, Affirmations, Reflections, and Summaries (OARS) to further enhance or consolidate the client’s level of motivation.
Full-Day Motivational Interviewing Training – This 6-hour training (7 hours total, with a 1/2 hour lunch break and two 15 minute breaks) provides attendees with a broad understanding of the foundational concepts of Motivational Interviewing. Attendees will learn how to assess a client’s communication around change and use Open-Ended Questions, Affirmations, Reflections, and Summaries (O.A.R.S) evoke or enhance change talk. Attendees will discuss the four processes of Motivational Interviewing and identify concrete tools that can be used during each process. The training will culminate with the creation of sustainable change plans. The goal of the training is to enhance the attendees’ ability to collaboratively work with clients to increase or consolidate motivation to address identified problem areas.
Two-Day Motivational Interviewing Training – This two-day training provides a total of 12 hours of interactive learning, covering the basic tenets and techniques delivered in the Full-Day Motivational Interviewing Training. There will be additional workshop time to put these new skills into practice, with fellow attendees, under the trainer’s guidance and direction.
Three-Day Motivational Interviewing Training – This three-day training provides a total of 18 hours of interactive learning, covering the basic tenets, and an introduction to intermediate level Motivational Interviewing skills. Attendees engage in multiple break-out group activities and process the learning experience after each activity.
Motivational Interviewing: Applying MI Skills in Telehealth Contacts – Attendees will review foundational Motivational Interviewing skills/concepts in this 3-hour training and discuss how to apply these skills in various telehealth modalities. Learning domains will include the Spirit of Motivational Interviewing, O.A.R.S (open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries) and values work. Training will include large group discussion and small group breakout.
Motivational Interviewing and Adolescence: Nurturing Independence – This 6-hour training will focus on the nuanced application of Motivational Interviewing fundamentals when working with adolescent clients. Attendees will learn about the Spirit of Motivational Interviewing, the four processes, OARS (open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries), and the different forms of communication (change talk, sustain talk, discord). Attendees will apply these concepts with the practice of adolescent-friendly Motivational Interviewing interventions that nurture agency and independence. The training will conclude with a discussion around how to increase caregiver (family, school staff, other adults) support around the adolescent’s treatment focus. The training will include large group discussion, breakout groups, and practice with concrete MI exercises.
Macro Motivational Interviewing: Understanding The Client Within Systemic Challenges and Community Support – This training will focus on Macro Motivational Interviewing skills that support a deeper understanding of the client within the context of their experience of historical and current marginalization and community resiliency. Training attendees will 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. Training attendees will examine Macro MI specific applications of the Spirit of MI, the Four Tasks, and OARS.
The Use of Motivational Interviewing to Call-In Oppressive Comments: Effectively Reducing Client Harm – This 5-hour session will use the framework of Motivational Interviewing to help providers dismantle oppressive beliefs, held by professionals with whom our clients need to interact, and support the creation of community-building narratives. Attendees will explore the difference between calling-in and calling-out, the benefits and drawbacks to each, and a framework for deciding which to use. Attendees will practice the use of open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries in the context of addressing harmful comments and opening discussions with clients about the level of advocacy that they desire. Space will be given to discuss increasing comfortability around “calling-in”.
Full-Day Motivational Interviewing and Systems: The Identification of System Motivation to Evoke Client Desired Change – This 6-hour training examines the many systems with which the client interacts, and how to motivate the systems to be more conducive to client desired change. Systems include, but are not limited to, family, school, work, mental health and medical programs, probation/parole, and child welfare. Trainees will learn the basics of Motivational Interviewing and how to apply these skills when interacting with reluctant system players.
Suicide Assessment and Prevention with Youth – This 6-hour training focuses on suicide risk factors, protective factors, assessment of risk severity, and safety planning. Attendees will familiarize themselves with general suicide risk and protective factors, also exploring factors that are specific to youth. Attendees will use this information to create a meaningful, dynamic safety plan that includes warning signs, formal and informal supports/contacts, supportive environments, and coping strategies. The training will include a brief discussion of suicide assessment tools available to agencies serving youth. Attendees will review the limits of confidentiality, framing these limits at the beginning of the treatment relationship, and how to initiate emergency services. The training will include large group discussion, breakout groups, and the use of vignettes.
Youth Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention: Effectively Engaging Caregivers – This 5-hour training will focus on effectively engaging caregivers in the suicide safety planning process. Attendees will review current U.S. youth suicide risk statistics, discuss research concerning caregiver experience when presented with their child’s suicide risk acuity, and identify ways to support the caregiver in collaborating with their child in the safety planning process. Attendees will practice the use of Motivational Interviewing open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries to elicit caregiver understanding of their child’s suicidality, increase provider understanding of client’s risks and resiliency factors, and consolidate motivation to safety plan. The training will include strategies for speaking with caregivers about means safety.
Motivational Interviewing to Support System Involved Youth Experiencing Suicidality: Consolidating Motivation to Live – This 3-hour training will focus on the use of Motivational Interviewing to assess and prevent youth suicide. Attendees will examine the way in which providers fall into the fixing reflex in high acuity situations and means to mitigate this. The training will support provider recognition of suicide-related sustain talk and life-affirming change talk and the way in which OARS (open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries) can be used to highlight life-affirming change talk in order to consolidate motivation to live. The training will culminate with breakout session practice of the use of OARS when facilitating a comprehensive assessment and safety plan.
Telehealth Suicide Assessment and Prevention with Adolescents – This 3-hour training will focus on suicide risk factors, protective factors, assessment of risk severity, and safety planning in the context of telehealth. Attendees will identify potential challenges when assessing suicidality by text, on the phone, and while using video platforms. The training will cover standardized and non-standardized suicide assessment tools and the means of titrating the use of these for telehealth. Attendees will then translate assessment information into a dynamic safety plan that includes warning signs, formal and informal supports/contacts, supportive environments, and coping strategies. Attendees will discuss how to address the limitations of confidentiality for the different telehealth modalities. The training will include large group discussion, breakout groups, and the use of vignettes.
Supervision
Clinical group and individual supervision.
Consultation
Agency consultation focuses on balancing agency contracts and/or grant requirements with a service population’s current needs. This includes assistance in documenting the use of Motivational Interviewing.
Tools
Seeds of Change Consulting trainings and supervision include the introduction and practice of concrete tools. Examples of tools include O.A.R.S (open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries), agenda setting, Motivational Interviewing Goal and Value cards, motivation scaling, change plans, strength-based supervision tools, cultural assessment questions, and safety planning tools.
Skills
SOC customers will learn to identify:
- Client reluctance,
- The etiology of the reluctance,
- Client resiliency factors,
- Change talk,
- Client family/community supports,
- Issues of culture and socio-economic status and how these effect treatment,
- And client-recognized change areas
SOC customers will learn to navigate:
- Deficit-based systems with which the client interacts/depends on,
- Program/agency mandates vs. the needs of clients,
- Transference/counter-transference
SOC customers will learn to facilitate:
- Client desired change
- Client system change
Documentation
SOC customers will learn to document interventions in line with standards set forth by:
- Medicaid (Medi-Cal)
- Grant providers
SOC customers will learn to identify, collect, and monitor outcome data.