Explore our upcoming courses for what will align with your professional development and learning goals. Be sure to check this page often to keep an eye out for new courses and additional offerings of past courses.
Ongoing Programs
Mental Health and Substance Use – Level 1
- Start date: December 1, 2025
- Format: 100% online, self-paced, instructor-supported with monthly optional real-time sessions
- Duration: Two courses of approximately 30 hours of content each, with six months to complete each course from start date
- Cost: $750 per course, $1,500 for the program
Click HERE to learn more and register
Description:
Frontline workers across various sectors often lack adequate training to effectively support clients with mental health and substance use challenges. This skills gap limits their effectiveness and highlights the need for accessible, targeted training programs for a diverse workforce.
The new UBC Micro-certificate in Mental Health and Substance Use is a part-time, asynchronous, online program designed to provide learners with the foundational knowledge and core skills they need to effectively and ethically engage in frontline service provision to individuals experiencing mental health and substance use challenges in multiple service contexts.
This program was developed by clinicians with many years of experience and expertise in mental health and substance use practice. Consultations with internal and external organizations, including the First Nations House of Learning, further contributed to ensuring that the program provides a relevant, applied, and culturally-informed learning experience.
By the end of the program, you will be able to:
- Identify and assess mental health symptoms and substance use challenges at a foundational level
- Develop foundational skills and strategies for effective and ethical engagement with individuals experiencing mental health and substance use challenges
- Describe and examine the social determinants of mental health and substance use, and methods to support holistic recovery
- Apply trauma-informed, strengths-based, and anti-oppressive approaches to engagement with individuals experiencing mental health and substance use challenges
In-person Courses
Journey to Wholeness - An Indigenous and Virginia Satir Approach
Date: June 11-12, 2026
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm PST
CEU: 12 hours
Location: In-person, UBC Point Grey Campus, xʷθəθiqətəm (Place of Many Trees)
Cost: $450 (lunch included)
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
NOTE: Familiarity with Virginia Satir’s model is beneficial, however not required.
Click HERE to Learn More and Register.
Financial supports to are available for students facing financial need.
Indigenous learners will receive a 30% discount on this course — made possible through generous contributions to the School of Social Work Community Learning Fund.
You can apply for financial support here.
You can apply for the Indigenous learner discount here.
Target Audience:
Therapists, counsellors, educators, community health workers, social workers, and those who are interested in culturally informed, holistic approaches to healing and personal development. Students in social work and other therapy-oriented programs are also welcome.
Description:
This course explores the intersection of Indigenous knowledge systems and the Virginia Satir Model for personal growth and family therapy. Participants will delve into how Indigenous practices—rooted in relationality, balance, and connection to the land—align with and enhance the core principles of the Satir Model.
Three experienced clinician educators will share diverse methods of how they use the Satir model in their clinical counselling practice, their work with Indigenous peoples and agencies, and in their personal lives. The course emphasizes experiential learning, highlighting tools like
storytelling, ceremony, and intergenerational wisdom as complements to Satir’s concepts of congruence, self-esteem, and transformational change.
Through case studies, hands-on exercises, and dialogue, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how to respectfully integrate these approaches to foster healing, harmony, and resilience in Indigenous individuals, families, and communities.
Virginia Satir’s Legacy and Model:
Virginia Satir’s approach is focused on the whole person, affirming that there is no separation of body, mind and spirit or life energy, as they work in unity, it has no color realm, and it cuts across all cultural norms. The Satir model focuses on internal and external aspects of the self and teaching coping styles from a body-oriented and family-centered perspective.
Her quote “Peace within, Peace between, Peace among”, can be found within each of the processes she used to demonstrate how we as human beings learn to be human, living with self, other and context. Her work is presented to us today as a model that encompasses the journey that an individual can embark on finding their own inner core, with an in-depth understanding of the need to be in collaboration with all of Humankind, all of Nature and the Universe.
Key Learning Outcomes:
- Describe the foundational principles of Indigenous ways of knowing and their compatibility with the Satir Model.
- Apply skills for incorporating Indigenous practices, such as storytelling and ceremony, into Satir-based therapeutic processes.
- Develop cultural humility and ethical awareness when working with Indigenous communities.
- Foster relational healing, which is listening from the heart, discovering what caused hurt, being vulnerable and rebuilding trust.
Learning Activities:
- Explore Indigenous paradigms and the parallels within the Satir Model
- Walk through the Virginia Satir Change Process
- Experientially learn the survival coping skills as a way of deep connection
- Explore Satir’s “use of self” with an Indigenous lens
Decolonizing Therapeutic Practice on Stolen Land - Tensions and Tending
Date: September 25, 2026 (Previously May 1, 2026)
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm PST
CEU: 6 hours
Location: In-Person, TBC
Cost: $250
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Click HERE to Learn More and Register.
Audience: This workshop is for everyone who is in the healing and helping professions and living on stolen land.
Course Description:
We use words like ‘decolonize’, ‘liberation’ or ‘reconciliation’ as terms of this time but what do they mean? How would we know we were pointed in the direction of these possibilities? How might these concepts and possibilities show up in our practice?
This day will be about starting to address these questions; slowing down to be curious with the narratives we carry about ourselves and other, and the impacts of these unconscious stories. This course is an invitation to develop practices that can support us to notice the somatic information that roots us back to ourselves - to our wisdom and to a fuller capacity to reduce the harms that are baked into colonial systems. This is not about shaming or blaming, it is about noticing how shame and blame show up in our bodies and thwart our wisdom. How caring for ourselves could move us towards liberation. We will explore practices to support the knitting together to ‘re-member’ the fullness of who we are to contribute to healing for all.
In this course, you will have the opportunity to consider how you connect with concepts like historical trauma and decolonization in an embodied and somatic way, through authentic connection, allyship, energy, and reframing practice tasks like documentation and duty to report through a decolonizing lens.
Learning Objectives:
- Critically understand concepts like white supremacy, colonization, reconciliation, and liberation, and how these concepts emerge in practice with Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients.
- Connect reflexively with your own unconscious narratives and embodied experiences of colonization, reconciliation, and liberation.
- Understand and apply a somatic approach to explore embodied experiences of historical trauma in clients, and in yourself as a practitioner.
- Apply this somatic lens to fostering authentic connections, liberation and healing in your practice with Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients.
Learning Activities:
There will be Circle sharing, small group discussions, journaling prompts and time for quiet and movement. Groups will be formed to support white, brown, black and Indigenous bodies to find connections that most support gentle conversations with individuals with a similar embodied and racialized experiences. With prompts and activities there will be an opportunity to slow and connect with somatic information to support liberation practices.
Virtual Courses
Neurodivergence-Informed Care Experience (NICE)
Date: May 28-29, 2026
Time: 1:00pm – 5:00pm PST
CEU: 8 hours
Location: Virtual – Zoom sessions
Cost: $240
Click HERE to learn more and register
Audience:
Clinicians, social workers, healthcare providers, educators, and community advocates.
Description:
The foundation of this course is the Neurodivergent-Informed Care Experience (NICE) model, which supports a practical approach to neurodiversity-affirming care across health, social care, and education.
This course introduces the NICE model and AFFIRM principles, laying the groundwork to apply them in practice. These steps provide an ethical and more effective approach to improving neurodivergent experiences in care and learning settings.
The AFFIRM principles provide a starting point for practitioners of all neurotypes to reflect on their current practice and work setting, and strengthen their knowledge and skills in providing neuro-affirming care.
AFFIRM stands for:
Address ableism
Find biases
Foster safety
Intersectionality
Relationality
Neurodiversity Movement
The NICE model provides four non-linear steps. In addition to the name of the model, NICE also stands for:
Nervous system
Integrative
Compassion-focused
Environment
Learning Objectives:
- To learn about the NICE model and AFFIRM principles.
- To understand how to apply NICE and AFFIRM in practice.
- To enhance knowledge and skills in providing neuro-affirming care.
Counselling skills for supporting individuals considering Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD)
Date: June 19, 2026
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm PST
CEU: 6 hours
Location: Virtual – Zoom session
Cost: $180
Click HERE to learn more and register
Audience:
Learners with some experience in clinical practice, who are interested in expanding their skills and therapeutic responses with clients considering MAiD.
This includes social workers, counselors, psychologists, and mental health workers.
Description:
Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is a legal healthcare option in Canada. Increasingly, Canadians are aware of MAiD, and those living with a serious illness or terminal illness may be interested in discussing and possibly accessing this end-of-life care option.
Living with a life-changing or life-limiting chronic or acute illness carries many losses from the point of diagnosis, through the course of the illness, and when death is nearing. Conversations exploring MAiD may be part of the therapeutic process for some clients, and being equipped with the skills to navigate these conversations can make an essential difference in an individual’s end of life experience.
Given its medical, legal and ethical implications, practitioners may feel uncomfortable or uncertain discussing MAiD with clients. This may be due to a lack of knowledge, experience, or clinical skills in this area on the part of practitioners.
This session provides participants with the knowledge, tools, and counselling skills to have effective and supportive therapeutic conversations with clients who are wishing to explore MAiD.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the legal framework of MAiD in Canada, including the application process, the assessment process, and eligibility criteria.
- Identify the most likely stages of illness during which clients may wish to discuss MAiD, and the nature of discussions that can take place at each stage.
- Develop and apply counselling skills for effective therapeutic conversations with clients who wish to discuss and explore Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) and its implications.
- Understand the differences between MAiD and suicide and how this distinction impacts practice.
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