POST-CONFERENCE LUNCH & LEARN · NASW 2025
Satir Growth Model: Where Macro Meets Clinical
You work with people navigating systems that are breaking down around them. This session explores a model built for exactly that — one that holds the person and their world together, not separately.
➤ FREE · Open to all attendees
➤ 1.5 NBCC-approved clock hours (ACEP No. 7683)
➤ Virtual · Noon - 1:30pm ET
➤ Breakout discussions included
Choose your date:
Why this session.
You came to this conference because you care about this work. And you probably arrived carrying more than you let on — the weight of clients in crisis, systems that keep failing them, and a profession that is being asked to do more with less. You are not separate from the people you serve. You are navigating the same turbulent moment.
In social work, macro and clinical are often experienced as separate worlds. The Satir Growth Model bridges them — recognizing that lasting change in a system grows from the people within it, and that meaningful clinical work is always shaped by the systems surrounding that person.
Macro and clinical aren't in tension. They're in relationship. This session — and the Satir Growth Model — is built around that idea.
What We’ll Focus on.
The Satir Growth Model is rich and far-reaching. For this session, we're going to focus on two pieces that feel especially alive right now — in a world where change is constant and the people we serve are carrying a lot.
Why Change Stalls — and How to Move It
(The Satir Change Process)
Change doesn't happen in a straight line — and when it stalls, it's not failure. Satir mapped the stages people and systems move through, including the hard ones nobody talks about. You'll learn to recognize where someone is in that process, what's normal at that stage, and how to support real movement — whether you're working with an individual, a family, a team, or a whole organization.
You Are Not Depleted. You Are Untapped.
(Internal Resources)
We already have what we need to cope and grow. Internal Resources is the framework for helping people identify and access exactly that — the strengths and inner tools they carry, often without knowing it. And this applies to practitioners too. In a profession navigating relentless demands and real burnout, knowing how to access your own internal resources isn't a luxury. It's what makes sustained, meaningful work possible.
What is the Satir Growth Model?
Developed by Virginia Satir — pioneering family therapist and one of the most influential figures in the history of human systems work — it's a framework for understanding people in context and supporting meaningful, lasting change.
IN JEAN MCLENDON'S WORDS
A mind, body, and spirit model. Systemic, relational, strengths-based, and experiential. Communication focused, process driven, outcome guided — and family of origin informed.
Mind, body & spirit: Change isn't just cognitive. It lives in the body and the spirit too — and this model works with all three.
Systemic: It works at every level — individual, family, organization, community. The same model, every scale.
Relational: How we connect is how we change. Relationship is the medium, not just the context.
Strengths-based: It starts with what people already carry — not what they lack.
Experiential:You don't just learn it — you feel it move through you. True change is embodied, not just understood.
Communication focused: The way we communicate reveals how we cope — and opens the door to something different.
Process driven: How something happens matters as much as what happens. Process is the avenue of change.
Outcome guided: Always oriented toward health and possibility — not pathology.
Family of origin informed: The patterns we learned early shape how we cope now. Understanding them opens new choices.
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— Jean McLendon, LCSW, LMFT · Director of Training, Virginia M. Satir Center
Who this is for.
Therapists, counselors, direct practice social workers
CLINICAL
Community organizers, policy advocates, nonprofit leaders
MACRO
Legislative advocates and public systems workers
HEALTHCARE
EDUCATION
School social workers and higher ed professionals
Hospital social workers and integrated care teams
GOVERNMENT
CURIOUS
Come as you are. Bring what you're working on.
Facilitators.
REGINA TAGGART
LCSW · Founder & Executive Director, VMSC
Regina has spent her career at the intersection of social work, systems change, and human development. A licensed clinical social worker and one of the leading voices in Satir practice today, she has brought the Satir Growth Model into hospitals, schools, nonprofits, and government settings — anywhere people are doing the hard work of creating change. She founded the Virginia M. Satir Center to make that work available to more practitioners, in more places.
KELLY TONEY
LISW-CP, CEDS · Satir Trainer, VMSC
Kelly has been practicing the Satir Growth Model for over 15 years — bringing it to kids, families, and individuals in her South Carolina practice, where she specializes in eating disorders and body image work. She believes Satir is the original strengths-based practice: a model that helps people see each other not as problems, but as the solution. Her work is deeply experiential — she uses embodied processes to make the invisible visible, helping people see and heal in ways that talking alone never quite reaches.
Join us. Lunch is on you — the learning is on us.
Select your preferred date when you register. Both sessions cover the same content.
Want to learn more about us first? Visit virginiasatircenter.com
