Monthly Continuing Education Programs

• Each month, HAMFT offers a professional development program for its members and prospective members that features speakers on a variety of topics relevant to Marriage and Family Therapists. Free Continuing Education credit is provided to HAMFT members in attendance. Programs feature master clinicians addressing a wide variety of clinical and professional topics. The next continuing education program appears on the front page of each monthly HAMFT Newsletter as well as on the home page and in the Programs & Events section of the website.
• Every year a half-day workshop in MFT Ethics is offered free to HAMFT members, and provides the three hours of Ethics CEUs required annually by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Marriage and Family Therapists. Other professional development offerings vary from one year to the next and reflect the emergence of topics of central importance to MFTs as well as the ongoing preferences of the membership.

Communication and Connection

HAMFT has a commitment to mentoring upcoming Marriage and Family Therapists, to honoring the history and tradition of MFT in our community, to preserving and strengthening the profession and to connecting with each other in ways that nurture both the professional and the personal development of MFTs in the Houston area. It is towards these ends that our efforts at communication and connection are directed.

• HAMFT publishes a monthly Newsletter on line. The Newsletter contains both informational and inspirational articles, as well as news of upcoming programs and events, legislative updates, opportunities for community involvement, a Poetry Corner, notice of individual members' transitions and accomplishments, ads and announcements, and anything else of relevance to our membership.
• An email system is employed to convey to the membership information that is time sensitive, as in the case of impending legislation that requires timely action on the part of MFTs.
• Monthly programs provide an opportunity for congenial interaction within a community of committed colleagues. Once or twice each year, monthly programs entitled Therapist Development Programs are offered to the membership as an opportunity to explore “the person of the therapist” within a nurturing, collegial context.
• Several special events are sponsored each year for the purpose of gathering as a community in a festive, social setting. In addition to an annual Holiday Party in December and a Spring Fling in April, HAMFT also offers an informal gathering at the end of the summer to welcome MFT students back to school and internship and into the Houston community of Marriage and Family Therapists.
• HAMFT's Warm Hearth Fund offers partial scholarships to members who need financial assistance in order to take advantage of professional development opportunities.

Community Involvement

• HAMFT has established a local Crisis Response Network of trained MFTs who stand ready to volunteer their time and expertise in the event of disaster. This network collaborates with TAMFT, the Red Cross, the City of Houston and other entities in order to provide coordinated mental health crisis intervention to survivors of disasters of any kind.
• HAMFT is a member of the Mental Health Association of Houston's Project Resiliency Consortium, charged with establishing a network of trained professionals who will provide ongoing pro bono mental health services to persons living in the Greater Houston area who are survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
• HAMFT maintains a list of senior therapists who provide time-limited therapy and supervision to students and pre-licensure professionals upon request.
• Proceeds from the Annual Workshop benefit Family PAC, our state Marriage and Family Therapy political action committee.

Networking and Practice Building

While continuing education programs and celebratory events provide opportunities for interfacing with fellow MFTs and students, and community involvement offers a chance to work with other mental health professionals and members of the community, there are a few services offered by HAMFT for the express purpose of facilitating networking and practice-building.

• In the monthly Newsletter, there is a section in which members may advertise office space, available positions, books, and upcoming professional events they are sponsoring through their practices or their agencies. Members may submit to the Newsletter announcements regarding the nature of their practices, special group or workshop offerings, and special interest groups that they would like to form with interested colleagues. In the past, members have used the Newsletter to form such peer consultation / study groups organized around specific populations, problems, clinical orientations or issues of professional growth.
• Each year, a Directory is published and mailed to all members. It includes the names and contact information for all Life, Clinical, Associate, and Student Members and a separate listing of Approved Supervisors; the geographical location of and any specialties addressed in each member's practice and any additional languages spoken by each member.