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• WATSA Training and Development Retreat 2025 featuring David Prescott - Pracitical Application of the Good Lives Model

  • When
    Fri, October 17, 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Bellevue Botanical Garden - 12001 Main St, Bellevue, WA 98005
  • Spaces left
    17
  • Registered
    18 registrants

  WATSA Training and Development Retreat 2025 

  
  

  When: Friday October 17, 2025 10:00am - 4:00pm

  Where: Bellevue Botanical Garden

  12001 Main St, Bellevue, WA 98005 

  Practical Application of the Good Lives Model with David S. Prescott, LCSW, LICSW

  The Good Lives Model (GLM) is an overarching practice framework for the treatment of people who sexually abuse. Its use has become increasingly widespread among programs and professionals. Research has shown that using the GLM can increase treatment engagement, an important component of effective programs. Through its interactive twin focus on attaining wellbeing while managing risk, the GLM offers a comprehensive approach for the way forward for clients whose actions have caused harm to others. Care must be taken, however, as any program that is misapplied might increase the very risks it seeks to mitigate.

  This training focuses on the GLM in practice and includes a focus on the new GLM book by Tony Ward, Gwen Willis, David Prescott, Stijn Vandevelde , Mary Barnao , and Wouter Wanzeele (due out on August 25, 2025). The training includes small and large-group discussion in a relaxing atmosphere.

  Learning Objectives

  As a result of this training, participants will be better able to:

  1) Explain the “Primary Human Goods” of the Good Lives Model (GLM), often operationalized as “Good Life Goals.”

  2) Distinguish between Common Life Goals that are important to the client in general, and those goals implicated in their offending specifically

  3) Explain four kinds of obstacles that clients have experienced to implementing their Good Life Plan

  4) Describe GLM-based assessment and intervention planning

  5) Distinguish between integration and implementation of GLM

  Bio

  A mental health practitioner of 41 years, David Prescott is the Director of the Safer Society Continuing Education Center. In that capacity he has overseen over 200 webinar interviews and trainings with a combined total of over 63,000 registrations.

  Mr. Prescott is the author and editor of 30 books in the areas of understanding and improving services to at-risk clients. This includes two primary texts on the Good Lives Model and several workbooks. Mr. Prescott has received three lifetime achievement awards from international organizations. He also served as ATSA President in 2008-09.

  He also served as Co-Blogger for ATSA’s Sexual Abuse blog, which has been read over a million times and was recently rated among the top blogs in the world on the topic.

   Box lunches will be provided by Fare Start. View the menu here.                              

  5 CEUs available

  WATSA is a Washington State DOH approved CE provider. CE Hours earned at this training count towards hours needed to renew your SOTP credential and/or your underlying health care license. We are not an approved provider for organizations such as the APA, NASW, AAFT or NBCC.

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• WATSA Book Club October Meeting - Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel

  • When
    Mon, October 27, 2025
  •  
    7:00 PM
  • Location
    TBA

  Register

  Join us for some socializing and camaraderie!  And as a reminder, you do not need to have read the book, to come to the book club meeting! 

  This month we'll be reading Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel by Loretta Ross

  From a pioneering Black feminist and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, this urgent and exhilarating memoir-manifesto-handbook provides bold, practical new ways to transform conflicts into connections, even with those we’re tempted to walk away from.
  
  In 1979, Loretta Ross was a single mother in Washington who’d had to drop out of Howard University. She was working at the DC Rape Crisis Center when the organization got a letter from a man in prison saying he wanted to learn how to not be a rapist anymore. At first, she was furious. As a survivor of sexual violence, she wanted to write back pouring out her rage. Instead, she made a different choice, a choice to reject the response her trauma was pushing her towards. This choice would set her on the path towards developing a framework that would come to guide her whole career: Rather than calling people out, try to call even your unlikeliest allies in. Hold them accountable—but with love.
  
  Calling In is at once a handbook, a manifesto, and a memoir—because the power of Loretta Ross’s message comes from who she is and what she’s lived through. She’s a Black woman who’s deprogrammed white supremacists, and a survivor who’s taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism. With stories from her five remarkable decades in activism, she vividly illustrates why calling people in—inviting them into conversation instead of conflict and focusing on your shared values over a desire for punishment—is the more strategic choice if you want to make real change. And she shows you how to do so, whether in the workplace, on a college campus, or in your living room.
  
  Courageous, awe-inspiring, and blisteringly authentic, Calling In is a “masterclass in constructive confrontation” (Adam Grant) and a practical new solution from one of our country’s most extraordinary change-makers—one anyone can learn to use to transform frustrating and divisive conflicts that stand in the way of real connection with the people in your life.  
  

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• Assessing Youthfulness Factors with Amy Muth, Richard Packard, and Brian Judd

  • When
    Fri, November 21, 2025
  •  
    12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
  • Location
    On-line

  Register

  More details coming soon!

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• ODARA Training with Laetitia Geoffroy-Dallery and Brian Judd

  • When
    Thu, December 04, 2025
  •  
    9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    On-line

  Register

  The Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) is an actuarial tool for estimating the risk that a domestic violence offender will assault a partner again. The ODARA scores indicate how a domestic offender compares with other domestic offenders in terms of risk for re-offense. Higher scores are related to frequency and severity of future assaults and shorter time until re-offence. The ODARA is easy to score and interpret, has shown excellent inter-rater agreement, and scoring accuracy improves with brief training. Thus, the ODARA is an important part of efforts to promote a coordinated, cross-sector response to domestic violence. It is designed to be used by police, victim services, health care, and correctional agencies, as well as forensic mental health professionals who conduct risk assessments and/or  treatment planning for domestic violence programs. This session will review the development, scoring, and interpretation of the ODARA, as well as the applicability of the ODARA for the assessment of risk for future intimate partner violence (IPV) recidivism in men and women with a history of physical IPV offending. Participants will have the opportunity to take a post-training test to receive formal certification as an ODARA user; a link will be provided at the end of the training session.

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• Violence Risk Scale- Sex Offender Version (VRS-SO)

  • When
    Fri, January 23, 2026
  •  
    8:30 AM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Register

  Violence Risk Scale – Sexual Offense version (VRS-SO) Training

  Trainer: Sharon Kelley, Psy.D.

  Date: January 23, 2026

  Cost: 

  Summary: The VRS-SO consists of a static risk measure, and a dynamic measure. The  dynamic measure can also be used with the Static-99R. The advantages of the VRS-SO include its ability to measure changes in sexual reoffense recidivism as a function of treatment change and the static, dynamic, and change scores being mathematically integrated to provide a more precise estimate of risk. The current norms (N = 913) and Excel-based calculator demonstrate good relative predictive validity, and each of the three scores make a unique contribution in the prediction of risk (i.e., incremental; validity; Olver et al., 2018). This one-day workshop will provide an overview of the development, relevant research, administration, scoring, and interpretation of the VRS- SO. Participants will have an opportunity to code the VRS-SO on one sample case to assess risk, identify treatment targets linked to sexual violence, and evaluate treatment changes. This workshop will be suitable to all who provide clinical/risk assessment, treatment, and risk management services to adults who were charged or convicted of sexual offenses, and to all who are interested in assessing change in treatment.

  Proposed course agenda:

  8:30am – 10:15am: Administration and scoring

  10:15am – 10:30am: Break

  10:30am – 11:00am: Scoring

  11:00 – 12:00pm: Research

  12:00pm – 1:00pm: Lunch

  1:00pm – 2:30pm: Complete Case Study practice: Pretreatment and review scores

  2:30pm – 2:45pm: Break

  2:45pm – 4:00pm: Complete Posttreatment Practice and Review Scores

  4:00pm – 4:30pm: VRS-SO interpretation and write-up. Use of the User’s Workbook and calculator.

  Course length: 6.5 active learning hours

  Course objectives: At the completion of this educational activity, learners will be able to:

  1. Apply the VRS-SO to identify treatment targets (criminogenic needs) for case-by- case treatment planning.

  2. Utilize the modified Stages of Change Model of the VRS-SO to assess treatment readiness and measure treatment changes on identified criminogenic needs. 

  3. Correctly rate the VRS-SO and interpret the results in a sexual risk assessment.

  4. Integrate the results from the VRS-SO and the Static-99R to obtain a current estimation of sexual risk.

  5. Summarize the relevant research supporting the use of the VRS-SO in a forensic setting.

  Brief Bio:

  Dr. Kelley has been an SVP evaluator since 2012. She is currently in private practice in Madison and a co-owner of the Forensic Assessment, Training, & Research (FAsTR), LLC. Dr. Kelley is a master trainer of the VRS-SO, and she has been involved in helping to write the VRS-SO User’s Workbook. She is also a co-developer of the SAPROF-SO and a trainer for the Static-99R and SAPROF (original tool). In addition to providing evaluations and training, she volunteers her time conducting research and participating in ATSA as a board member.

  WATSA is a Washington State DOH approved CE provider. CE Hours earned at this training count towards hours needed to renew your SOTP credential and/or your underlying health care license. We are not an approved provider for organizations such as the APA, NASW, AAFT or NBCC.

  
  

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• Traditional Masculinity, Social Media, and the Future of Violent Extremism

  • When
    Fri, March 20, 2026
  •  
    12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Register

  Traditional masculinity is becoming a major force in the future of violent extremism. While race remains central, masculinity—centered on control, dominance, and discipline—is just as influential. Gender and race work side by side to reinforce rigid hierarchies and offer a sense of order, identity, and purpose.

  Online spaces are key to this shift. Extremist groups use memes, aesthetics, and emotionally charged content to promote a stylized version of masculinity—tough, loyal, in control, and supposedly under threat. Ideology often comes later. What comes first is a feeling: connection, belonging, shared frustration. That emotional groundwork makes more extreme content easier to accept over time.

  Recruitment is also changing. It’s no longer just about persuasion—it’s relational and slow. Young people facing instability, isolation, or chaos are targeted early, often without realizing what they’re being drawn into. The process often looks like grooming: trust is built first, ideology comes later.

  This shift has serious implications for how radicalization is understood and addressed. If recruitment is driven by emotion, identity, and belonging—not just belief systems—then prevention efforts need to respond to how masculinity is being shaped and weaponized online. It's not just about countering ideas, but challenging the emotional and cultural pull that makes those ideas appealing in the first place.

  Understanding how traditional masculinity functions in extremist spaces is key to seeing where violent extremism is heading—and why it remains so effective in pulling people in.

  Jamie R. Noulty holds an MA in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies from Simon Fraser University, and is currently in the PhD Cultural Studies Program at Queens University. His research and work focus are on gendered violence, masculinity, post-conflict, extremism, and emerging men’s studies.

  
  

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