Facilitator: Professor Stephen Hart (Canada)

Cost: £650 inc VAT

Duration: 2 Days - Tuesday 27th and Wednesday 28th March 2012

The practice of clinical risk assessment and management has changed greatly in the last five years. Predicting harmful outcomes in clients continues to be the first line of response by busy practitioners trying to prioritise large caseloads of demanding and potentially at-risk clients. However, recent research makes it clear that reliance on prediction models to manage individual risk is unsafe. There are a number of reasons why this is the case. Risk prediction tools make a comparison between an individual client and a group of research participants with a known rate of reoffending they do not predict harmful outcomes in individuals. Also, risk prediction does not facilitate risk formulation or individual risk management planning assessment using a risk prediction tool does not encourage an understanding about why harmful outcomes are a possibility or the mechanism by which treatment, supervision and monitoring processes can lead to managed risk.

This two-day training course has three objectives:

        (1) to give practitioners a summary of the most up-to-date research findings relevant to         violence and sexual violence;

        (2) to give practitioners an overview of the most recent clinical guidance on risk assessment and management using a structured professional judgement approach;

        (3) to give practitioners the opportunity to advance their practice in respect of clinical interviewing skills, risk formulation, risk management planning, and risk communication through relevant exercises and case studies.

This course is intended for experienced psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and probation officers, and nurses working in forensic mental health and correctional services in institutions and in the community. This course is best suited for practitioners who have already undergone training in risk assessment tools such as the HCR-20, SVR-20, RSVP, or SARA and who wish to enhance the quality of their practice using these tools.