Increase your confidence and provide advanced interventions for families with alcohol and other drug issues

When: Thursday 27 November and Thursday 4 December 2025
Time: 9:30am–4:30pm (each day)
Duration: 7 hours (each day)
Location: Online

Working with families can be complex and challenging. Providing effective support for multiple people, often with very different perspectives, raises the difficulty level for practitioners.

Building on our Working with Families with Alcohol and Other Drug Issues workshop, this masterclass prepares you to use proven methods for effectively engaging and working with families. Deep dive into effective ways of working with families and deepen your understanding of evidence based frameworks that get great outcomes with families. You will walk away with the skills and confidence you need to support families and improve outcomes in your individual clients.

This masterclass draws on the Orford stress-strain-information-coping-support model, combining elements of the Orford and the Velleman 5-step model, and blends key ideas from family therapy, motivational interviewing, and cognitive behaviour therapy to work more effectively with the families and carers of people who use alcohol and other drugs.

On average, participants of Families of Substance: A two day masterclass in working with families report a 74% increase in knowledge, 92% increase in skills, and 92% increase in confidence. Satisfaction is rated at 9.1/10 on average and 100% of participants would recommend this workshop to others.

Learning outcomes

• Understand models of family functioning and how it affects treatment
• Describe the stress-strain-information-coping-support model for working with families and how to use it in practice
• Establish a collaboration and utilise it to improve outcomes for people in treatment and their families
• Apply effective family therapy interventions
• Know how to utilise families' wisdom and coping to achieve improved outcomes
• Implement effective responses to the challenges of working with families

Who should attend

This is an advanced skills workshop suitable for experienced and advanced practitioners. We recommend you complete our Working with Families workshop before attending this workshop. This workshop is suitable for workers in clinical settings.

Facilitator: Paula Ross

“Really relevant to my work role. Super knowledgeable, engaging and generous trainer. Good balance between listening to the presentation and engaging in activities with other participants. I felt well connected to the group and participation was encouraged and supported with helpful feedback provided.”

- Workshop participant 2023