Understanding features of trauma: The importance of in-depth trauma screening instruments

Live webinar: Understanding features of trauma: The importance of in-depth trauma screening instruments

Date: October 17, 2025 | Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET

Facilitator: Ian Robertson, MSW, RSW.

Description:
As with all effective treatment plans, good treatment begins with clear clinical understanding of the client’s presenting issues. Trauma presentation is individualized and unique from one person to another. With this, so are the trauma specific symptoms and presentation itself. The epidemiology of trauma is influenced by ancestry, early development and attachment, culture, family systems, environment, and the degree of compounding exposures all implicating the inner and outer world of the client.

This training provides the learner with detailed and practical explorations of current best practices in assessing and case formulation in working with adults having complex trauma survivors. It explores the importance of the therapeutic relationship in the assessment process and reviewing formal, standardized screening instruments as well as informal assessments, interviews, and activities, while also applying a trauma-sensitive assessment process method.

Participants will be able to summarize the collected trauma screening results, identifying target treatment areas for the development of an individualized (multimodal) treatment plan. This training will have an interactive learning component for incorporating all of the screening instruments for the development of a treatment plan and treatment summary report.

Learning objectives:

• Supporting safety throughout the screening process.
• The role of the therapeutic attunement in the assessment process.
• The potential risks of trauma screening to early.
• A structured assessment process for suicide risk and safety planning.
• Applying a trauma-informed methods to the Trauma screening and assessment process.
• Cross-Cultural Screening and assessment.
• Overview of a broad range of trauma screening instruments.
• Identify processes for selecting tools for trauma.
• Incorporating Traumagram as part of the assessment process.
• Pulling all the collective data together to establish a case conceptualization and case formulation for a treatment plan.
• Matching specific multimodal treatment approaches to the presenting areas identified from the trauma screening process.

Registration fee: General - $300  |  Student - $270

For full program overview and registration details please visit: https://cvent.me/ERVmwl

Facilitator Bio:
Ian Robertson, MSW, RSW, serves as an organizational consultant and educator for several healthcare and social service agencies. In this role, he provides education, consultation and clinical supervision to several community-based organizations and hospital systems. Ian’s focus is to help establish and deliver high-quality, trauma-informed, and integrated standards of practice and care. He also provides staff development in the clinical areas of substance abuse, trauma, concurrent disorders, and mental health, with a focus on evidence-based treatment approaches. Ian also provides clinical supervision for various independent and organizational regulated practitioners.

Ian is an adjunct instructor at Wilfrid Laurier University's School of Social Work, teaching in the Trauma and Clinical Supervision certificate programs.

Previously, Ian served as the Regional Clinical Supervisor for Addictions and Mental Health at the Niagara Health System for many years. He has presented at international, national, and provincial conferences on the topics such as integrative organizational trauma-informed care practices, and other substance abuse treatment and mental health practices.  

Ian holds a master’s degree in social work from McMaster University and the designation of an Advanced Clinical Supervisor from Smith College's School of Social Work in Massachusetts, USA. He owns and operates a therapy group practice in Niagara Falls, ON.

Continuing Education (CE) information: 6 CE hours