*Note* This scheduling program was not designed by folks who do a lot with APA Style and unfortunately it defaults to listing authors in alphabetical order. We cannot fix this for this online schedule, but the author orders are posted in the order submitted in the printed program available via pdf here.
Restoring Justice for LGBT Communities through Professional Education and Training As mental health professionals we recognize the importance of restorative justice as documented by Campbell (2008). When applied to LGBT individuals, restorative justice may require a community rebuilding process (Gumz, 2004) and the development of competencies to treat LGBT individuals who have been victimized by criminal behavior or incompetence of mental health professionals. Rectifying the latter requires us to begin more thorough training in LGBT professional competence. This clearly begins with our education and training programs. One research study found psychologists received little training in areas of sexual orientation and gender identity and limited opportunities to work with these populations during training (Johnson & Federman, 2014). Our presentation will focus on the qualitative data collected from the first graduates of a LGBT Human Services and Mental Health certificate program. The certificate program provides 15 different courses designed to aid clinicians in developing competencies to work with LGBT individuals, couples, and families. Graduates will be interviewed about their satisfaction with the certificate, sense of preparedness in working with the LGBT clients, and experiences restoring clients who have been victims of microaggressions, criminal behavior, and incompetence on the part of untrained mental health professionals. We will present these findings in a conversational style, followed by group discussion of these planned questions: 1. What is essential for mental health professionals to become more competently trained with LGBT clients? 2. How do you guard against microaggressions in your own work? 3. How can mental health professionals become more involved in the restorative justice movement through education and advocacy? 4. How do you provide support to LGBT students in hetero-normative environments within educational institutions? We plan to discuss how the experiential-based component of the student feedback and conference participants’ discussion will lead to changes that need to be made to the certificate program.
