Monthly Gathering for Woman-Identifying People
Every First Thursday at DC Writers’ Salon

This monthly meetup held in partnership with the DC Writers’ Salon is comprised of a 90-minute writing group for serious or just-for-fun writers and a 30-minute solidarity session for sharing what you’re writing about and other things you’re thinking about and experiencing. It is open to all woman-identifying people looking for a space to relax, connect, vent, listen, and relate to one another. Writers are encouraged to bring a notebook or laptop and their own lunch. The DC Writers’ Salon will provide the gorgeous space, seltzer, and light snacks. This writing group is intended to encourage women to gather, hold space for each other, and exist in harmony and loving support of one another. This space is meant to be a salve for the injuries inflicted by our current culture, and a revolutionary return to women’s inherent abilities to love and be loved, and to value and be valued by one another and ourselves.

Monthly Gathering for Woman-Identifying People
Every First Thursday at DC Writers’ Salon

This monthly meetup held in partnership with the DC Writers’ Salon is comprised of a 90-minute writing group for serious or just-for-fun writers and a 30-minute solidarity session for sharing what you’re writing about and other things you’re thinking about and experiencing. It is open to all woman-identifying people looking for a space to relax, connect, vent, listen, and relate to one another. Writers are encouraged to bring a notebook or laptop and their own lunch. The DC Writers’ Salon will provide the gorgeous space, seltzer, and light snacks. This writing group is intended to encourage women to gather, hold space for each other, and exist in harmony and loving support of one another. This space is meant to be a salve for the injuries inflicted by our current culture, and a revolutionary return to women’s inherent abilities to love and be loved, and to value and be valued by one another and ourselves.

CE Workshop with Katie Piura, LCSW-C, LICSW
Online via Zoom Video

Lisa Kays PLLC invites you to attend this course, which explores human trafficking in the DMV Metropolitan Area. The definition of human trafficking, how it occurs in DMV area., signs of human trafficking in patients, and vulnerability factors for victims. This course will also go over human trafficking myths versus facts as well as the intersection of trauma and human trafficking. This course will explore how factors like technology, immigration and the pandemic have impacted human trafficking and correlate with human trafficking.

CE Workshop with Lisa Kays, LICSW, LCSW-C, LCSW
Online via Zoom Video

Lisa Kays PLLC invites you to attend this workshop, which provides an overview of group psychotherapy, how it is different from support groups and other types of group interventions, how it can be used in tandem with individual psychotherapy to accelerate a patient’s treatment, as well as populations and diagnoses it is well suited for treating. This course is appropriate for social workers at the following levels of practice: beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

Monthly Gathering for Woman-Identifying People
Every First Thursday at DC Writers’ Salon

This monthly meetup held in partnership with the DC Writers’ Salon is comprised of a 90-minute writing group for serious or just-for-fun writers and a 30-minute solidarity session for sharing what you’re writing about and other things you’re thinking about and experiencing. It is open to all woman-identifying people looking for a space to relax, connect, vent, listen, and relate to one another. Writers are encouraged to bring a notebook or laptop and their own lunch. The DC Writers’ Salon will provide the gorgeous space, seltzer, and light snacks. This writing group is intended to encourage women to gather, hold space for each other, and exist in harmony and loving support of one another. This space is meant to be a salve for the injuries inflicted by our current culture, and a revolutionary return to women’s inherent abilities to love and be loved, and to value and be valued by one another and ourselves.

Monthly Gathering for Woman-Identifying People
Every First Thursday at DC Writers’ Salon

This monthly meetup held in partnership with the DC Writers’ Salon is comprised of a 90-minute writing group for serious or just-for-fun writers and a 30-minute solidarity session for sharing what you’re writing about and other things you’re thinking about and experiencing. It is open to all woman-identifying people looking for a space to relax, connect, vent, listen, and relate to one another. Writers are encouraged to bring a notebook or laptop and their own lunch. The DC Writers’ Salon will provide the gorgeous space, seltzer, and light snacks. This writing group is intended to encourage women to gather, hold space for each other, and exist in harmony and loving support of one another. This space is meant to be a salve for the injuries inflicted by our current culture, and a revolutionary return to women’s inherent abilities to love and be loved, and to value and be valued by one another and ourselves.

Monthly Gathering for Woman-Identifying People
Every First Thursday at DC Writers’ Salon

This monthly meetup held in partnership with the DC Writers’ Salon is comprised of a 90-minute writing group for serious or just-for-fun writers and a 30-minute solidarity session for sharing what you’re writing about and other things you’re thinking about and experiencing. It is open to all woman-identifying people looking for a space to relax, connect, vent, listen, and relate to one another. Writers are encouraged to bring a notebook or laptop and their own lunch. The DC Writers’ Salon will provide the gorgeous space, seltzer, and light snacks. This writing group is intended to encourage women to gather, hold space for each other, and exist in harmony and loving support of one another. This space is meant to be a salve for the injuries inflicted by our current culture, and a revolutionary return to women’s inherent abilities to love and be loved, and to value and be valued by one another and ourselves.

Monthly Gathering for Woman-Identifying People
Every First Thursday at DC Writers’ Salon

This monthly meetup held in partnership with the DC Writers’ Salon is comprised of a 90-minute writing group for serious or just-for-fun writers and a 30-minute solidarity session for sharing what you’re writing about and other things you’re thinking about and experiencing. It is open to all woman-identifying people looking for a space to relax, connect, vent, listen, and relate to one another. Writers are encouraged to bring a notebook or laptop and their own lunch. The DC Writers’ Salon will provide the gorgeous space, seltzer, and light snacks. This writing group is intended to encourage women to gather, hold space for each other, and exist in harmony and loving support of one another. This space is meant to be a salve for the injuries inflicted by our current culture, and a revolutionary return to women’s inherent abilities to love and be loved, and to value and be valued by one another and ourselves.

Monthly Gathering for Woman-Identifying People
Every Second Thursday at DC Writer’s Salon

The Village is a monthly gathering for all woman-identifying people looking for a space to relax, connect, vent, listen, and relate. First conceptualized as a therapy group for “angry women,” creators Lisa Kays and Paula D. Atkinson, both psychotherapists, were inspired to create a casual and open space for women to be whatever they are. After countless months in this pandemic, what Lisa and Paula continue to observe in their woman-identifying clients is exhaustion, isolation, separation, and debilitating expectations of themselves. The Village is intended to be just that, a village of women connecting to combat the messages of our patriarchal, individualistic and capitalist culture that divides women, has us competing with each other and denying support. We are meant to gather, to hold each other, to exist in harmony and loving support of each other. The Village is meant to be a salve for the injuries inflicted by the culture, and a revolutionary return to women’s inherent abilities to love and be loved.

CE Workshop with Michael Giordano, LICSW
Online via Zoom Video

Clinical social workers are trained to view drug use through the lens of addiction and often raise red flags when hearing about client experiences with drugs, especially illegal substances. When this happens, we risk damaging the therapeutic relationship and missing important aspects of their lives, stories and usage. This course will help attendees explore hidden or not so hidden beliefs about drug use and “drug culture,” through the lens of our Code of Ethics. Participants will learn reasons beyond addiction that clients might use substances. As a result, attendees will be better equipped to stay attuned with their clients and serve them more effectively. Due to the interactive nature, we request that cameras are on for this course.

CE Workshop with Michael Giordano, LICSW, CST
Online via Zoom Video

Living in an oppressive culture has lasting and traumatic impacts on one’s emotional well-being. The cultural oppression of gender diverse, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, & queer folk has its own particular contours and impacts. Therapists working with these populations would do well to understand this form of oppression, how it shows up in the life span, and how clients can heal from the cultural trauma while still living in its shadow. The course is highly participatory and focuses less on practice skills, so clinicians at any skill level, with limited understanding of LGBTQ clients, can benefit from the content. It will be particularly useful for straight and cisgender identifying therapists and social workers. Due to the interactive nature, we request that cameras are on for this workshop.

CE Workshop with Lisa Kays, LICSW, LCSW-C, LCSW
In-Person at Keegan Theater

This course will review the NASW Code of Ethics language updates in a number of areas, and particularly those relating to Cultural Competence and Social Diversity and Social Workers’ Ethical Responsibility to the Broader Society, among others. Improv, with its roots in the social work profession and settlement houses as a tool for communication across language and cultural barriers, is a natural vehicle to experientially explore and enhance skills related to ethical decision-making, particularly those around managing anxiety that emerges when confronted with ethical dilemmas, and, in particular, interpersonal and macro-level experiences with race, oppression and discrimination. Working from and processing case material provided by course participants about ethical dilemmas they have faced in these areas, the course will intersperse opportunities for clinical processing of how lessons and games relate to and impact our work where it intersects with racial harm, microaggressions, and systemic oppression and racism.

Monthly Gathering for Woman-Identifying People
Every Second Thursday at DC Writer’s Salon

The Village is a monthly gathering for all woman-identifying people looking for a space to relax, connect, vent, listen, and relate. First conceptualized as a therapy group for “angry women,” creators Lisa Kays and Paula D. Atkinson, both psychotherapists, were inspired to create a casual and open space for women to be whatever they are. After countless months in this pandemic, what Lisa and Paula continue to observe in their woman-identifying clients is exhaustion, isolation, separation, and debilitating expectations of themselves. The Village is intended to be just that, a village of women connecting to combat the messages of our patriarchal, individualistic and capitalist culture that divides women, has us competing with each other and denying support. We are meant to gather, to hold each other, to exist in harmony and loving support of each other. The Village is meant to be a salve for the injuries inflicted by the culture, and a revolutionary return to women’s inherent abilities to love and be loved.

CE Workshop with Paula D. Atkinson, LICSW
Online via Zoom Video

This workshop explores the psychosocial aspects of weight and body shape, the broad range of social sciences including anthropology and sociology that create the way we think about weight and health. Participants will gain knowledge about body shape and weight issues in our current society, the definitions for one’s weight status, and the relationships between body size, weight and health. Participants will also be asked to explore their own thoughts, feelings, and ideas about their own bodies and how to manifest optimal health, sanity, and peace in their relationships with food and body size.

There will be discussions about the relationship between weight ideals, perceptions, concerns, body image, self-esteem, and identity. We will examine these factors across history and various cultures, and how these ideas influence health and identity. We will also explore the topics of fat phobia, size-ism, thin idealism, and weight stigma and how these intersect with other forms of oppression as well as how they influence all aspects of health. Also discussed is eating disorders and the many manifestations of disordered eating that can occur.

CE Workshop with Lisa Kays, LICSW, LCSW-C, LCSW
Online via Zoom Video

Lisa Kays PLLC invites you to attend this course, which provides an overview of group psychotherapy, how it is different from support groups and other types of group interventions, how it can be used in tandem with individual psychotherapy to accelerate a patient’s treatment, as well as populations and diagnoses it is well suited for treating. This course is appropriate for social workers at the following levels of practice: beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

CE Workshop with Michael Giordano, LICSW
Online via Zoom Video

Clinical social workers are trained to view drug use through the lens of addiction and often raise red flags when hearing about client experiences with drugs, especially illegal substances. When this happens, we risk damaging the therapeutic relationship and missing important aspects of their lives, stories and usage. This course will help attendees explore hidden or not so hidden beliefs about drug use and “drug culture”, through the lens of our Code of Ethics. Participants will learn reasons beyond addiction that clients might use substances. As a result, attendees will be better equipped to stay attuned with their clients and serve them more effectively.

CE Workshop with Paula D. Atkinson, LICSW
Online via Zoom Video

This workshop explores the psychosocial aspects of weight and body shape, worth and body liberation, social justice and health. The course explores specific cases and questions about our work within rampant diet culture and fat phobia. We will also explore the topics of fat acceptance, size-ism, thin idealism, and weight stigma and how these intersect with other forms of oppression as well as how they influence all aspects of health. Also discussed is eating disorders and the many manifestations of disordered eating that can occur. In addition, participants will also be asked to explore their own thoughts, feelings, and ideas about their own bodies and how to manifest optimal health, sanity, and peace in their relationships with food and body size, as a means to grow as social workers and effective clinicians.

CE Workshop with Emily DeCarlo, LCSW
Online via Zoom Video

This course provides an introduction to the planning and execution of conducting clinical supervision for social workers towards licensure as well as addresses some of the potential challenges and ethical problems that can occur when conducting supervision both for an external practitioner or internal. The course will address issues around legal and ethical implications for conducting supervision towards licensure as well as topics such as cultural humility, intent vs evidence-based practice of supervision, training and logistics.

CE Workshop with Paula D. Atkinson, LICSW
Online via Zoom Video

This workshop explores the psychosocial aspects of weight and body shape, worth and body liberation, social justice and health. The course explores specific cases and questions about our work within rampant diet culture and fat phobia. We will also explore the topics of fat acceptance, size-ism, thin idealism, and weight stigma and how these intersect with other forms of oppression as well as how they influence all aspects of health. Also discussed is eating disorders and the many manifestations of disordered eating that can occur. In addition, participants will also be asked to explore their own thoughts, feelings, and ideas about their own bodies and how to manifest optimal health, sanity, and peace in their relationships with food and body size, as a means to grow as social workers and effective clinicians.

CE Workshop with Michael Giordano, LICSW, CST
Online via Zoom Video

Kinky sex and BDSM have long been misunderstood, and even pathologized, by society and clinicians. However, large numbers of people have kinky sex and are often uncomfortable talking to their therapist about it. This course will help therapists understand exactly what is kinky sex, including BDSM as well as their personal relationship and reaction to these misunderstood sexual practices. Additionally, participants will learn six elements of healthy sexuality, and how to assess if sexual activities — kinky or vanilla — are right for the client. This session is most relevant to intermediate-level clinicians, though all should be able to benefit from it.