Sunday, July 20

VSIAS is an education provider for a number of credentialing and academic organizations. VSIAS exercises its ethical responsibility to ensure that contact hours are earned fairly and honestly by awarding contact hours for session attendance only if an individual attends a minimum of 80 percent of that session. VSIAS Faculty can not make exceptions to this policy and will take required professional action in cases of misrepresentation.

PRE-CONFERENCE – An Introduction to SMART Recovery – Chris Gatewood, LPC, CSAC, SMART Recovery Regional Coordinator for Virginia

Level:                     Introductory  
Limited:                Open
Other:                    0.5 Ethics included
Contact Hours:   2.0

Brief Description: The presentation will consist of an overview of SMART Recovery, split into multiple sections. The first would be on the history of the organization. Next would be an in-depth breakdown on the 4-points of SMART. These 4 points encompass philosophical themes of self-empowerment and practical applications. The focus of the ethics discussion will be on Autonomy and Nonmaleficence. This specifically surrounds the notion of providing options to clients that are not Judeo-Christian coded. While 12-step organizations are self-proclaimed as “spiritual, not religious”, this is not necessarily how many see it. Providing options for clients is an ethical duty to support their ability to choose what path they want to take. Beyond just that, the recent shift towards embracing harm reduction likewise supports that autonomy.

Educational Objectives: 

• To provide an understanding of the SMART Recovery program.
• Comparison and contrast to 12-step
• Identify recent shift in SMART to embracing harm reduction
• Identify important aspects of ethics in regards to referral to community supports.

Themes Addressed:

• Recovery
• Approaches to providing peer recovery supports
• Ethics