Prevention Talk # 7: Community Approaches to Violence Prevention

The pathways to substance use and violent behavior often represent similar trajectories for many young people; so it is not so surprising that research has shown that evidence-based interventions are often successful at preventing both behavioral problems.  To explore these successful interventions and other work related to violence prevention, APSI has invited Bobbi Beale, PsyD and Daniel J. Flannery, PhD from Case Western Reserve University to join the next Prevention Talk and discuss their work and research at the Begun Center for Violence Prevention and Research. During this Prevention Talk, you will hear about the community approach employed by the Begun Center to promote social justice and community development and focus their research on the causes of violence prevention. They will also discuss their approach to training different actors in the community such as social workers, teachers, law enforcement and other professionals, on the principles of effective violence prevention.

Speaker Bios

Bobbi Beale, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist and a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Innovative Practices, part of the Begun Center at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Beale has over 30 years of practice and expertise in trauma, resilience, system of care and behavioral health treatments for children, youth and families, specializing in Intensive Home Based Treatment and Adventure Therapy. She spends most of her time training, consulting and providing technical assistance across Ohio to support behavioral health providers of multi-system youth and family services.

Bobbi has focused on designing non-traditional therapy programs for youth populations that are at risk or have trauma histories.  During the current pandemic, Bobbi teamed up with Maurie Lung to adapt their AT curriculum for telehealth application. They created a 12 session family therapy series for clinicians to provide virtually in an effort to support and stabilize families and were able train over 200 therapists online. This program was so well received, they are working on additional virtual projects including a virtual AT parenting program and a podcast.

Her programs have utilized adventure therapy, a highly engaging and experiential treatment, to increase skills and resiliency for children, youth and families.  She launched her own training and consulting business, Life Adventures for All, to continue working on validating AT with clinical research with Dr. Anita Tucker on new AT programs with a variety of applications: group, home-based and multi-family groups. Bobbi’s current personal adventure is to design and implement a program that combines adventure therapy with CIP’s home-based treatment model, to serve children and youth right at home with their families, where they belong.

Bobbi recently collaborated on a book, Adventure Group Psychotherapy: An Experiential Approach to Treatment, which explores what is necessary for an experiential therapy group to function effectively, and the practical skills needed to inspire success.

Daniel J. Flannery, PhD is the Dr. Semi J. and Ruth W. Begun Professor and Director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention, Research and Education in the  Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences (MSASS) at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).  From 1998 to 2011 he served as founding Director of the Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence at Kent State University. He is a licensed clinical –child psychologist, a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Notre Dame, and a Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Case University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. He has authored several edited volumes including Youth Violence: Prevention, Intervention and Social Policy (1999) for American Psychiatric Press and of the Cambridge Handbook of Violent Behavior and Aggression (2007 and 2018) by Cambridge University Press. He is author of Violence and mental health in everyday life: Prevention and intervention for children and adolescents (2006) and Wanted on Warrants: The Fugitive Safe Surrender Program (2013). He is a committee member and co-author of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s 2016 report Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy and Practice.

Flannery’s primary areas of research are in youth violence prevention, the link between violence and mental health, and community-based program evaluation. He received his PhD in 1991 in Clinical Psychology from The Ohio State University. His previous appointments were as Assistant Professor of Family Studies at the University of Arizona, Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry at CWRU, and Professor of Criminal Justice Studies and Public Health at Kent State University. He was named a University Distinguished Scholar at Kent State in 2006 and appointed in 2008 by the Secretary of Education to the U.S. Department of Education’s Safe and Drug Free Schools Community Advisory Committee. Dr. Flannery has generated as Principal or Co-principal investigator over 40 million dollars in externally funded research. He has served as advisor to various local and national organizations including the Institute of Medicine, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Crime Prevention Council, the National Resource Center for Safe Schools, and the Ohio School Safety Center.