Professional Services
DGS is Delaware’s largest provider of non-residential mental health services for children and families.
Professional Development
DGS has a full menu of professional development topics, we also create custom packages tailored to individual needs and areas of interest. DGS is dedicated to supporting the growth and increasing the knowledge of all professionals. Our goal is to provide staff with hands-on, evidenced-based trainings to develop one’s skills and tools to utilize with children being served.
Current Course Offerings
How Brains are Built
Learn about brain development in a fun and easy to understand format! Using the metaphor of building a house, you’ll learn about the critical phases of brain development that are necessary for children to be successful in school, home, and the community. Using this knowledge, you’ll be able to develop strategies to strengthen parts of the brain that are still “under construction.”
Understanding the Brain and its Stress Response System
Get ready to take a deep dive into the inner workings of the brain! Learn how the typically developed brain works and how brains are affected by trauma and stress. You’ll develop specific strategies for working with children’s’ brains that are “chronically stressed” or affected by trauma such as abuse, neglect, and adversity.
The Collaborative Classroom
In this course, you’ll learn how to create a classroom environment that promotes collaboration, self-regulation, and positive discipline strategies. This course will give you specific strategies and interventions to design a classroom that meets the needs of all types of learners, and especially learners that have a history of trauma and/or adversity. Filled with practical tips and suggestions, teachers will gain new tools to address today’s classroom needs.
Executive Function (what’s your function?)
Find out more about this very important brain function, including how it develops and how we can strengthen it for children that have difficulty with emotion regulation, focusing, excessive movement/activity, planning, organizing, and information recall.
All About Attachment
This course will help you understand the definition of attachment, the different styles of attachment, and how to relate to children that have difficulty attaching to their parents, teachers, schools, and community supports. You will learn a highly researched and effective method for developing healthy attachments with all children, and especially children that have difficulty developing connections with caregivers or teachers.
No-Drama Discipline
Based on the work of Dr. Daniel Siegel and Dr. Tina Payne Bryson, authors of the New York Times best-selling book “No-Drama Discipline,” you’ll discover simple, but effective methods for understanding and addressing behavior challenges. Rooted in neuroscience, the strategies focus on whole-brain methods of discipline that increase insight, empathy, and improve executive functioning skills.
The Learning Brain
How to Cultivate Receptive Learners: Expanding on trauma and its effects on learning, this course will teach you how to create emotional safety in the school setting, develop positive relationships with ALL students, and assist student development of self-regulation skills.
Self-Care for Teachers
Teachers risk for burnout has reached an all-time high. Self-care is not only a necessity, but a skill to be learned and practiced. A teacher that maintains good self-care practices will experience higher job satisfaction, increased productivity, and happier classrooms.
Crisis Prevention and Intervention, Trauma Informed Care in the Classroom, and De-Escalation Basics
- Delaware Guidance Services for Children and Youth, Inc. is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program.
- DGS is a certified provider of services through the Delaware Institute for Excellence in Early Childhood
- NBCC National Board of Certified Counselors and the ACEP Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology
Contact Nicole Thompson, LCSW
nthompson@delawareguidance.org
(302) 652-3948 ext. 1212