Rafiki Consortium

Spirituality in Counseling

This workshop is designed to assist participants in the process of operationalizing spirituality in the counseling process.  Everyone talks about spirituality today, but more examination may be needed of the definitions, processes and the context of spirituality in counseling.  Counseling is art, science and most of all it is a discipline. 

Couples Work
Henry and Jannette Gregory provide premarital counseling, couples therapy, couples groups and couples retreats in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area for persons interested in working through relational challenges and developing healthy relationships. read more

Motivational Interviewing
Coming soon. A twenty hour Continuing Education Workshop (20 CEUs) for psychologists, social workers, substance abuse counselors and professional counselors in Motivational Interviewing. Course will be scheduled for the fall. Stay tuned. read more

The Art of Listening
Listening is commonly regarded as the foundation of counseling and psychotherapy. It is also the foundation of most psych-educational development processes i.e. parenting, mediation, anger management, etc. and it certainly is the foundation of interpersonal interaction and communications. This workshop offers the opportunity to examine the multidimensional aspects of listening as both an attitude and skill. The workshop will explore listening as a science and as an art form that forms the basis for relationships and healing. The workshop will be both didactic and experiential and presented using multimodal methods.

Rafiki is a Kiswahili word that means "friend".  We see ourselves as friends of the community.  Our philosophy of service delivery is based on the following assumptions:

·   People are innately good;

·  All people want the best for their families;

·  All people want the best for their communities;

·  Communities are groups of families;

·  Communities know their needs;

·  In a properly functioning system/community everyone has a valuable role to play in meeting those needs;

·  Communities like individuals have inherent strengths that must be tapped;

·  People will work together when provided with a genuine opportunity to do so;   and

·  Empowered families make strong communities.

Rafiki specializes in teaching the facilitation of communication, understanding that families, groups and communities can solve their own problems when provided with the appropriate tools and support. Rafiki sees its mission as the provision of clinical services and training that promotes the healing of negative attitudes, behaviors, thought patterns and emotional states that prevent the delivery of quality service to families and communities. Rafiki promotes skill development, attitudes of service and consciousness of social issues as necessary tools of both professional and indigenous helpers.

The Rafiki Consortium has experience providing direct services, supervision and program management in a variety of human service formats.  Rafiki specializes in providing training to professionals, paraprofessionals and community persons; which supports them in being family focused, spiritually based, culturally competent, solution oriented and totally empowering to their service populations.  Rafikis trainings are didactic, experiential and therapeutic for the participants. Rafiki provides training in the following areas:

Motivational Interviewing	Stages of Change
Enriched Structural Family Therapy	Counseling Skills
Cultural Competency	Mediation/Conflict Resolution
Group Dynamics	Family Systems
Wrap Around Services	Crisis Intervention
Suicide: Assessment & Treatment	Substance Abuse Counseling
Stress Management	Anger Management
Clinical Supervision	Clinical Documentation
Effective Communications	Emotional Competence
Parenting & Co-Parenting	Brief/Solution-Based Therapy
Burnout Prevention	Team Building

Enriched Structural Family Therapy (ESFT), is the centerpiece of the family management and parenting skills training that Rafiki is offering.  It is a competency based, skills oriented, systems approach to working with families.  ESFT is a highly teachable model which works well,  providing participants with a solution-oriented process for improving family functioning and solving problems. 

The model evolved out of the work of Henry Gregory, Jannette Meriweather Gregory, and Ross Ford.  This model is an enrichment of structural family therapy developed originally in the late 1960's and the early 1970's with minority families in Philadelphia, Baltimore and other urban centers.  The ESFT model is used by many human service agencies in Baltimore and Washington, DC. 

Training is performed in the following manner:

· Training utilizes a competency oriented approach which focuses on the strengths of the individual and the family, thereby promoting feelings of safety and openness in the trainee.

· Training is skills oriented. Training focuses on a parallel process, utilizing the same skills with the trainees that are to be used with their families.  Conceptually, then, trainees will experience these skills as real and beneficial to their own lives before they attempt to influence others with them.   

· Training respects the rights and abilities of individuals to make decisions about their lives, with the aid of a facilitator who helps to clarify communications, options and consequences. 

· Training promotes independence, as it presupposes that everyone has an innate capacity and innate strength that can be focused as a foundation for change.