The Martha K. Selig Educational Institute is the training and education center of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services (JBFCS), one of the nation’s leading mental health and social service agencies. For more than 100 years, JBFCS has been providing innovative care to meet the ever-changing needs and everyday life challenges of all New Yorkers. The unique synergy created between training and practice enables the Selig Institute to blend the latest theories in mental health care/ human service intervention with depth of academic and hands-on experience, yielding unparalleled insights for our professionals and care for those we serve.

At the heart of an extraordinary network of programs and services is a highly trained staff. This emphasis on ongoing training and education has helped the agency attract, cultivate and retain the highest quality professionals. Chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, the Selig Institute continually updates our roster of educational programs.

The Selig Institute serves both JBFCS staff and the broader mental health and human service community. The Institute meets the needs and challenges of today’s practitioners through a broad range of educational programs, which consist of specialized, advanced training seminars; topical on-site and on-line workshops; community lectures and conferences, internship placements, and research initiatives. In addition, we design and conduct customized training programs to meet the needs of particular organizations.

JBFCS uses the lenses of trauma and anti-racism to understand our clients, ourselves, and the relationships that ensue. Through our work with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and our scholarsin- residence, JBFCS is moving toward undoing racism.

The outstanding faculty at the Selig Institute is comprised of professionals from JBFCS and the larger mental health community who have extensive experience in both training and practice. Unique partnerships between JBFCS and the Columbia University School of Social Work and JBFCS and Mount Sinai School of Medicine link research skills and practice experience to advance social work knowledge for the field.

Whether you are an individual practitioner, a public or private agency, or a social service organization, this superior training can enable you to:

• Deliver excellence in clinical practice;
  
• Become and remain certified;
  
• Gain hands-on learning experience;
  
• Increase depth of knowledge in select areas;
  
• Learn about new treatment models;
  
• Enrich career opportunities through ongoing professional development; and
  
• Become part of a network of the best trained professionals in the field.

Each year the Institute also benefits from the expertise of visiting scholars in areas of current concern who teach and train professionals at all levels.

Saul Z. Cohen Chair in Child and Family Mental Health
1996-1998 Bessel van der Kolk, MD
1998-2001 Sandra Bloom, PhD
2001-2003 Claude M. Chemtob, PhD
2003-2005 Anderson J. Franklin, PhD and Nancy Boyd-Franklin, PhD
2005-Present Kenneth V. Hardy, PhD

Pauline Falk Chair in Community Education and Research
2003-2005 Claude M. Chemtob, PhD
2005-Present David Billings, DMin.