top of page
Blue Spiral Training
At Blue Spiral Consulting, we create practice-driven, experiential learning environments. We utilize adult learning techniques that encourage guided self-discovery and bring about an internal shift that then informs external performance. We bring our experiences from current fieldwork into the classroom and ask participants to bring in their current cases to practice with. When you walk into one of our training sessions, you’ll find child welfare workers and leaders clustered in small groups discussing the best strategies for safety planning, and you’ll see a current case from the jurisdiction that we’re in represented along the wall as we map out worries, what’s working well, and next steps. Our virtual learning experiences are equally interactive and exemplify our commitment to personal growth as a cornerstone of professional development.
“I’ve been in the child welfare business for 25 years, and this series is by far the best and most comprehensive training I’ve attended.”
— Wilson County, NC child welfare supervisor
​
​
“ This training was so helpful in giving me new tools to engage my families in a meaningful way - not just by being ‘family-friendly’ but real strategies that work.”
— Wisconsin child welfare CPS investigator
Signs of Safety
As seasoned child welfare trainers and consultants, it takes a lot to impress us. Signs of Safety not only hits that mark but offers a comprehensive implementation process that includes a focus on Organizational Alignment, supporting Leadership, creating a whole-system Learning* environment that includes much more than classroom training, as well as tracking Meaningful Measures. Courtney and Lindley are two of only nine licensed Signs of Safety Trainers and Consultants in the United States. We are active participants in the international Signs of Safety community and have trained in the US and Canada and are active participants in the international community with Elia International.
Signs of Safety Trainer sand Consultants
Elia International
​
—————————————————​
®
Child Welfare Frontline Coaching (Technical Assistance)
Blue Spiral Consulting maintains a commitment to current issues that practitioners face with families. Our ongoing contact with the children and families at the heart of this work has allowed us to retain our skills as frontline service providers. We provide technical assistant visits focused on frontline practice, organizational alignment and training delivery. We model an Appreciative Inquiry approach to bring out the best in the professionals we shadow, the families who invite us into their homes, and the quality assurance or policy makers for organizations. We build into technical assistance visits an integrative showcase of tools and case examples that we share with the entire agency at the end of our visit. This experience is the best way we’ve found to support workers and organizational leaders, to ensure that training generalizes to practice and to create sustainability of Signs of Safety and other models.
We provide technical assistant visits focused on frontline practice, organizational alignment and training delivery.
​
—————————————————​
Cultural Competence and Diversity
Culture shapes every aspect of child welfare work. The recipients of child welfare services are often from marginalized groups of race, ethnicity, LGBTQ identity, or poverty. Families within these marginalized groups are far more likely to come to the attention of child protective services than more influential or affluent families in similar or worse situations. At Blue Spiral Consulting, we consider cultural competence and diversity sensitivity to be essential tools for the professional social worker and the organizations that direct their work with families and children. We help organizations uncover disparity and disproportionality within their own community and address it through cultural responsiveness and awareness training as well as the implementation of practice models designed to prioritize equitable service provision to
all families.
​
—————————————————​
Child & Family Teams
In 2007, NC State University developed a comprehensive Child and Family Teaming process through a collaboration with family recipients, skilled facilitators, and experienced trainers. Courtney and Lindley both participated in delivering the series as trainers and facilitators. At Blue Spiral Consulting, we offer a series of virtual training modules in child and family teaming that include voices of experienced facilitators and families who have experienced effective and not-so-effective Child and Family Teams. We can support your organization in developing a family teaming process that fits your agency culture; we can train facilitators to effectively manage the complex dynamics that occur when families under stress come together to plan for a child’s safety.
​
—————————————————​
Effective Leadership & Supervision
The heart of child protection is held by the frontline professional who sits across from a weeping mother, a wounded child, or a father who has been shut out of his child’s life. The worker is also the most vulnerable part of the system. Without support from a direct supervisor who fosters critical thinking and encourages constant learning and development or from a senior leadership team that moves mountains to shift policy, standards and processes so that they support best practice with families a child welfare worker can feel isolated, ineffective and unheard. We believe that senior leadership coaching and team development at the supervisory level can make all the difference in successful outcomes for families.
​
—————————————————​
Policy, Think Tank, and Strategic Planning Projects
Lindley’s passion comes alive when she is in the middle of a discussion about research, smart policy and how to create the most innovative and robust plan for the future. We have the tools to bring people together to make decisions in consensus with everyone’s voice represented, whether we are designing smart policy that drives best practice, facilitating statewide Think Tanks, or pulling together agency senior leadership and community partners to create a long-term implementation of strategic plans.
​
—————————————————​
Trainer Development: Facilitation
and Instructional Design
Mentoring effective facilitators and trainers is one of our very favorite deliveries because it builds the infrastructure for sustainability and allows organizations to support their vision from within their own system. Working with other trainers and facilitators allows us to transfer our own growth and learning from many years of facilitation to other professionals in the talent development arena. Whether we are developing internal trainers to lead an implementation project such as Signs of Safety or working with a university training team on facilitation skills or instructional design, we are in our element. This highlights the best of what we offer and keeps us in demand as trainers and consultants. Inquire about our year-long virtual experiential learning series. This program builds facilitation skills, introduces several theories about adult learning, offers opportunities for practice and feedback and culminates in a three-day in-person instructional design workshop.
​
—————————————————​
Differential Response
In 2000, Courtney was a primary author of the Differential Response curricula for North Carolina. As faculty trainers with Appalachian State University, she and Lindley helped train social workers in all 100 counties in this new paradigm shift for best practice. ASU was a partner of the NC Statewide Child Welfare Training Collaborative. We have found that the family engagement strategies of Differential Response support a paradigm shift in a system that has historically taken a paternalistic approach with families that maintains a focus on culpability and safety planning for them instead of with them.
​
—————————————————​
bottom of page