Event details

  • April 25-27, 2025

  • In-person event!

  • Atlanta, GA | Westin Perimeter North

  • Up to 13 CE hours

  • Networking, self-care, and fun

  • Special early bird pricing

Early Bird Pricing through February 1st

Register now for the Early Bird Discount. Prices include event registration only. Details about hotel room booking to be announced!

*New Professional ticket pricing is available to those who graduated in or after 2019. Simply purchase your New Professional ticket, then email proof of your graduation date or associate license to [email protected]. 

Full Price Ticket Sales Start Sunday, February 2nd

GAMFT Member Regular Price = $400

New Professional Regular Price = $250

Non-member Regular Price = $475

**Cancellation Policy: Registration may be refunded up to April 23, 2025. A $10 administration and transaction fee will be deducted from your refund.`

Using Clinical Supervision to Promote Clinical Success, Job Satisfaction, and Retention

Plenary Sessions 1 & 2 (4 CEs)

Dedicated professionals serving children, youth, adults, and families adversely impacted by hardship, tragedy, and trauma confront many challenges imposed by their complex work ecology. This course will examine two broad, but distinct career paths for professionals. Some navigate these difficulties and consistently achieve desired clinical outcomes, professional growth, and job satisfaction. Others struggling to do so likely underperform, become dissatisfied, and leave their jobs. 

Clinical supervision is one key component addressing challenges in one of the most demanding careers. In this course, we draw on a diverse research database to inform an ethically focused, success-oriented supervisory context and infuse four empirically supported activities. 

You'll learn... 

  • How professionals can use supervision to foster or disrupt career paths
  • Learn what challenges in the workplace hamper clinical success, job satisfaction, and retention
  • Four supervision activities that promote clinical success, job satisfaction, and retention 



Developing Expertise? You Must Engage in Deliberate Practice

Plenary Sessions 3 & 4 (4 CEs)

Research on psychotherapy training methods upsets the existing well-ingrained professional development processes. What does this research tell stakeholders? 

  • Therapist self-assessment is biased toward unfounded overconfidence.
  • Supervision enhances professional development but does not lead to improved clinical outcomes. 
  • Adherence to theoretical models are unrelated to clinical outcomes. 
  • Evidence shows that continuing education workshops do not produce sustained skill development. 

What then must the professional do to develop expertise? Professionals along with relevant stakeholders must shift from an intervention-based to a process-oriented learning approach. 

This course reviews three steps for helping professionals make this shift: 

  1. To focus on known markers of disrupted therapeutic process
  2. To see moment-to-moment exchanges involving disagreement and alliance ruptures as “little outcomes” that cascade and profoundly impact the “big outcomes” 
  3. And to use deliberate practice to help professionals rehearse desired responses to identified markers of disrupted therapeutic process.

In this interactive course, we'll view and discuss video sessions and have opportunities to apply skills to your own roles and work settings. 

You'll learn...

  • Three steps from shifting from intervention-based to process-oriented learning
  • How exchanges that involve involving disagreement and alliance can rupture relationship-based outcomes, impacting treatment outcomes
  • How practice helps professionals respond effectively to a disrupted therapeutic process

Tentative Event Schedule

Three days of education & community building

Friday  

  • 10am-12pm: Pre Conference Workshops (2 CE) 
  • 2:15pm-5pm: Welcome and Plenary Session 1 (2.5 CE) 
  • 5-6 pm: Socializing & Networking - details to come!
  • 7-9:30pm: GAMFT Board Meeting

Saturday 

  • 8am-9am: Business Meeting* 
  • 9:15am-10:45am: Plenary Session 2 (1.5 CE) 
  • Mindful break 
  • 11am-12:30pm: Plenary Session 3 (1.5 CE) 
  • 2pm-4:30pm: Plenary Session 4 (2.5 CE) 
  • 5:30-7pm: Evening events - details to come! 

Sunday 

  • 8am-8:45am: Early morning wellness activities - details to come!
  • 9:30am-11:30am: Post Conference Workshops (2 CE) 

Instructor(s)

Instructor Bio:

Dr. Steve Simms, PhD, LMFT, is a distinguished psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist, and an AAMFT approved supervisor recognized for his innovative work in systemic family therapy. He holds a PhD in School Psychology and an M.Ed. in School Psychometry from Georgia State University. As the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Child and Family Therapy Training Center and an independent practitioner in Media, Pennsylvania, Dr. Simms has dedicated his career to helping caregivers liberate children, adolescents, and young adults from self-defeating, life-altering, and life-threatening patterns. With a wealth of experience in teaching and consulting, Dr. Simms has made significant contributions to in-home family therapy programs, mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities, and public children and youth services. His expertise extends to his tenure as a staff psychologist at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic and the Division of Oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as his previous role as an Associate Clinical Professor at the Medical School University Pennsylvania through Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Pediatric Oncology Treatment Center and was an Adjunct Professor at Chestnut Hill College. Dr. Simms is an accomplished author, having contributed to numerous scientific papers, clinical articles, and book chapters in the fields of pediatric oncology, pediatric psychology, family therapy, and clinical supervision. His acclaimed book, Breaking the Cycle: How to Turn Conflict into Collaboration When You and Your Patient Disagree, co-authored with Dr. George Blackall and Dr. Michael Greene, was released in April 2009, providing valuable insights into transforming conflict into collaboration in clinical settings.

Dr. Steve Simms, PhD, LMFT

About the Philadelphia Child and Family Therapy Training Center


The Philadelphia Child and Family Therapy Training Center offers Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT) training, education, consultation, and research in family and couples therapy, and developmentally-based approaches to child, adolescent and adult behavioral health issues.

PCFTTC is an outgrowth of the Training Center founded in 1975, by Salvador Minuchin, MD, for systemic family therapy and training. His training center was associated with the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic connected to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

To learn more, visit https://pcfttc.com/