The Saskatoon Child and Adolescent Conference | Park Town Hotel
Family Events
Behavioural Challenges, At-Risk Children and Youth, Indigenous Approaches, Strength-Based Care, Resilience, and Self-Harm Response
This intensive three-day conference brings together leading clinical experts to equip professionals with advanced, evidence-informed strategies for working with high-risk, marginalized, and emotionally dysregulated children and adolescents. Designed for psychologists, counsellors, educators, social workers, and allied professionals, the conference moves beyond traditional compliance-based models toward collaborative, culturally responsive, and strength-based approaches that build resilience and safety across systems.
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Day One – May 20, 2026
Working with High Risk Children and Adolescents: Collaborative and Strength-Based Interventions
Presented by Carissa Muth
Dr. Muth provides a paradigm shift in understanding “challenging” behaviour, reframing explosive outbursts, opposition, and resistance as adaptive responses to unmet needs and skill deficits. Participants explore the neurobiology of dysregulation, practical risk assessment, and dynamic safety planning for acute concerns including self-harm, suicidality, and aggression.
Drawing from Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS), Motivational Interviewing, Solution-Focused Therapy, and narrative approaches, attendees learn how to reduce resistance, increase intrinsic motivation, and engage families as active partners. The day emphasizes cross-sector collaboration between therapy, school, and home to create an integrated safety net for at-risk youth while supporting clinician sustainability and self-care.
Day Two – May 21, 2026
Applying Indigenous Practices to Build Resilience and Strength in Children and Adolescents
Presented by Lyndon J. Linklater
Lyndon Linklater draws on Indigenous worldviews, Treaty teachings, and lived experience to illuminate how resilience is nurtured through identity, land, language, kinship, and community. Participants deepen their understanding of historical and contemporary Treaty relationships and how these shape clinical, educational, and community practice today.
Through storytelling, reflection, and practical strategies, attendees explore how young people inherit not only trauma but also profound cultural strength. This day emphasizes creating environments that affirm identity, strengthen protective factors, and honour Indigenous youth as leaders rooted in cultural continuity.
Day Three – May 22, 2026
Working with Children and Youth Who are High-Risk, Marginalized and Engage in Self-Harming
Presented by Caroline Buzanko
Dr. Buzanko offers a clinically precise and relationally grounded approach to working with youth at the intersection of trauma, marginalization, and self-injury. Moving beyond outdated safety contracts, participants learn to understand the function beneath self-harm and apply intersectional and biosocial frameworks to assessment and intervention.
The workshop covers trauma-informed engagement, dialectical behaviour therapy skills for adolescents (DBT-A), collaborative safety planning, harm reduction, and navigating complex ethical dilemmas involving confidentiality and parental involvement. Emphasis is placed on maintaining therapeutic boundaries, clinician regulation, and sustaining the moral courage required in high-stakes work.
Information Source: Jack Hirose & Associates | eventbrite
