Who are HOPE Trainers?
HOPE Regional Trainers are leaders within their respective fields, and have significant experience working with HIV infected or affected individuals. HOPE trainers are professional psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health clinicians who volunteer their time to provide their communities with the knowledge and skills necessary to better serve their clients. HOPE trainers are located throughout the United States, in 44 states and national territories including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam.
Trainers are trained using a train the trainer model and are only able to provide trainings once training has been successfully completed.
Types of Training
HOPE Regional Trainers design their workshops, based on APA-approved curricula, to reach a diverse group of participants including: Psychologists; Psychiatrists; Social workers; Nurses; Educators; Administrators; Doctors; Graduate students, and Lay people.
Trainings are custom-tailored for a variety of settings including: Military; School-based programs; Community meetings; Graduate courses; Hospital in-services; and Professional conferences.
HOPE Regional Trainers have the expertise in providing trainings to a variety of audiences addressing issues on various topics relating to clients who are infected or affected with HIV/AIDS. HOPE Regional Trainers are specially trained by the HOPE program to provide highly informative, engaging, and skills-building workshops. Trainings may include the HOPE program’s Multi-Disciplinary Mental Health Services Curricula on Ethical Issues and HIV/AIDS training, or the mental health service delivery training that include topics useful to clinicians serving clients who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. Delivery of these dynamic, interactive workshops can be arranged by contacting HOPE program staff.
Opportunities for Training Delivery
HOPE Program trainings are suitable for delivery to diverse audiences including: psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, social workers, direct care givers, and others.
These professional level trainings are designed for use in:
Local, state, and provincial psychological association conferences;
Mental health association meetings;
In-service training for psychiatric facilities, mental health clinics, hospitals, hospice, nursing homes, and juvenile care facilities;
National association conventions;
Continuing studies programs for graduate credit;
Staff retreats;
Graduate courses in psychology, counseling, nursing, and social work;
Community health educator training;
VA medical centers;
Correctional facility staff;
School faculty and staff; and,
Drug treatment and intervention staff.
HIV Mental Health Service Delivery Training
The APA HIV Office for Psychology Education (HOPE) Program offers a selection of nine (9) topic-specific workshops designed to further develop knowledge, and practice skills, for clinicians working with those infected or affected with HIV. Standard workshops are approximately one-hour to half-a-day and designed to build clinical skills as well as to develop participants' insight into the psychological and counseling challenges they and their clients face.
In order to assist HOPE trainers in delivering highly informative trainings, the HOPE Training Resource Package was designed specifically for HOPE Regional Trainers as they endeavor to train their fellow mental health professionals about the psychological, psychosocial, and neruopsychological issues associated with HIV. Contained within the Training Resource Package is everything needed for HOPE Regional Trainers to assess, develop, and implement highly informative trainings for their communities.
The Training Resource Package includes nine modular components. Each module is flexible enough to be adapted into trainings. Because the HOPE Training Resource Package is all encompassing, HOPE trainers are able to provide a training experience that is responsive to the needs of an individual site, group, or academic institution.
The nine modules include:
HIV Virology, Clinical Course, Medical Treatment, Epidemiology, and HIV Testing;
Integrating Primary and Behavioral Health into HIV/AIDS Care;
Mental Health Assessment Issues and Strategies for the HIV-infected Population;
Mental Health Intervention Strategies for the HIV/AIDS Population;
Prevention Issues HIV/AIDS for Mental Health Providers;
HIV/AIDS and Families;
Work in the Lives of HIV-infected Individuals: Roles for Psychologists;
Drug Use, Abuse, and HIV/AIDS; and,
HIV/AIDS and the Transgender Population.
Multi-Disciplinary Mental Health Services Curricula on Ethical Issues and HIV/AIDS
The systematic decision-making process on which the Multi-Disciplinary Mental Health Services Curricula on Ethical Issues and HIV/AIDS is based offers several advantages over less structured methods of analysis. The curricula address ethical considerations of HIV-related health services and teaches a model for ethical decision-making. Because it requires mental health providers to analyze cases from a variety of perspectives while carefully documenting each step of their cognitive process, it serves to reduce impulsive judgments that frequently occur when they feel pressured to act quickly due to the worries about the possibility of HIV transmission or law suits. The systematic decision-making process within the HOPE Ethics training also helps to sharpen thinking and clarify many of the clinical issues that arise when working with HIV/AIDS infected and/or affected individuals by requiring the clinician to perform separate, sequenced analyses.
There are three versions of the Ethics Curricula:
Half-Day;
Two-Hour; and,
60/90 Minute Workshops.
Overall objectives for the curricula include:
Learn a model for ethical decision-making;
Learn how to analyze complex HIV cases in terms of five foundational ethical principles in conjunction with professional ethics codes;
See how the ethical decision making model applies to a case study (60/90 Minute and Two-Hour versions); and,
Apply the ethical decision making model to an HIV mental health case study (Half-Day version).
The Ethical Issues and HIV/AIDS Curricula can only be trained by a HOPE Program Regional Trainer and is not available online. For more information regarding the curricula, and to locate a Trainer, please contact HOPE Program staff.
Short Term Evidence Based Counseling Intervention Tools for People Living With or at High Risk for HIV (coming soon)
These curricula, developed specifically for mental health clinicians, will provide evidence based counseling intervention tools for teaching clients living with or at high risk for HIV skills necessary to maintain their health, reduce HIV and STD transmission, and improve their quality of life. The tools presented during this HOPE sponsored training have proven to be effective in one-on-one counseling sessions and can easily be adapted and integrated into clinical treatment plans and therapy sessions. Trainings are dynamic and skills-based. They provide opportunities for participants to apply the tools in a systematic integrated way using a clinical case study.
There will be two versions of the curriculum:
4-hour training; and,
60-90 minute sessions.
Overall objectives for the curricula include:
Explain the theoretical basis for successful application of tools from the evidence based counseling intervention, entitled CLEAR;
Describe how to use evidence based counseling tools from CLEAR to more effectively assist clients in coping with the challenges of living with or preventing HIV; and,
Use evidence based tools from CLEAR in a systematic, integrated way to maximize their effectiveness.
Continuing Education (CE) Credits Available Through HOPE Trainings
If Continuing Education (CE) credit in the field of psychology is required for your staff or attendees of a HOPE-sponsored training event, a HOPE Trainer will complete and submit an application to the American Psychological Association's Office of Continuing Education in Psychology.
Applications must be submitted for review no fewer than 6 weeks prior to the training event.
